Tuesday, June 26, 2018

COPY EDITING

         
The past week has been a busy one. On the 21st, our planet decided to return closer to the Sun again, guaranteeing at least one more fall and winter for us. As an incurable optimist, I am looking forward to a fall with gorgeous foliage and a winter with moderate snow and temperatures for outdoor activities. Hopefully, by that time all the children on the Mexican border will have been restored to their parents. 

       Back to writing. Before sending a manuscript to a publisher, it needs a close review. Copy editing is the process of checking a document for spelling, capitalization, grammar, and punctuation, the nuts and bolts of writing. Almost anyone with a good basic education and a sharp eye can do copy editing. 

         Programs like Word and Pages include checking grammar and spelling. I often utilize a robot program called Edit Minion for copy editing. To use it, I paste the manuscript into the program, which illuminates weak words, preposition endings, unnecessary adjectives, passive voice, etc. in different colors, providing the opportunity for correction. 

         Copy editing is quite different from reviewing a piece of creative writing for style. The latter, called editing, involves a consideration of voice, cliché, plotting, character development, and other aspects of the craft. Editing requires considerable experience and as stated in my previous posts, is often best left to a professional.

Friday, June 8, 2018

A PROFESSIONAL EDITOR

I worked on my second novel, And Evil Shall Come, for more than ten years. It was to be a thriller about biological weapons. The protagonist was an enthusiastic young woman reporter, and I researched the storyline. Creative writing has become competitive with publishers discarding unsolicited manuscripts unread, so mine had to be good.

I revised the manuscript eighteen times with Strunk and White’s Elements of Style alongside the computer, but the story was still not right. It was interesting but leaden. I had never studied creative writing so I attended a few writing workshops. These were not helpful, and I spent my time trying to interest publisher’s agents in my work.

Among the many how-to books on writing, two of them by Sol Stein, Stein on Writing and How To Grow A Novel, were helpful. I read them cover-to-cover, highlighting important sentences, and I tried to incorporate the changes in my manuscript.

Finally, I decided to call Sol Stein and ask him for help. He told me he was too busy and suggested I call his sister Toby.

Toby Stein was a Barnard graduate and a professional editor and writer with a number of published books and novels. I called her and described my novel.

“Sounds interesting,” she said. We talked fees. “OK, send me the manuscript and a check.”

After a few weeks I received a package from Toby containing about fifteen pages. She had read and critiqued every chapter, paragraph, and line.

“You are a good writer with a remarkable talent for dialogue,” she wrote, “and we will build on that. You should consider minimizing the use of narrative summary to explain the story. This is a novel, not a textbook. Let the characters move the story on by their actions or by dialogue.”

Toby’s pages were filled with the craft of writing, and I still refer to them. She critiqued every line I had written, often suggesting elimination, substitution or modification. Occasionally she praised a sentence or paragraph and I glowed with pleasure. I learned a great deal from Toby as I rewrote my novel. I sent it to the publisher with feelings of satisfaction and pride.

I’d like to be able to say And Evil Shall Come became a blockbuster or a best seller, but this was not the case. Marketing books is more difficult than writing them and is itself an art or science.

I turned to Toby again as I wrote The Ebola Connection, and once again she provided excellent guidance.