Whew! Anyone want to take a breath with me? Breathe in, Breathe out. Breathe in, Breathe out. Ahhhh feels good, doesn’t it?

So, yes, the arcs are done. What did I find?

There were a few odd editing errors. I mean… really odd editing errors. For instance, a sentence ended a paragraph in the original version. All of the rest of that paragraph was deleted, but that particular sentence remained, but was added to a different paragraph where it made no sense. Yeah, weird… I know.

What I also came across were places where a string of speech was removed for one reason or another, leaving what was left behind “hollow”… meaning someone answered a question that was never asked, or things like that. Yes, weird again.

I also found a sentence where a word was missing, but it was in the original text. Isn’t that odd? I guess I took for granted that the file would be cut and pasted. Apparently not.

What I marked mostly was something that I DON’T think they will fix, even though I asked for it. The reason is that I just saw the same thing in a published novel from this publisher.

It’s silly, and very anal I will admit… but on my Kindle, if a sentence falls off with a “…” at the end… if placed correctly, the “…” will be treated as its own word and end up all by itself on a line. I asked that ending “…” ellipses be attached to the final word in each case where they appear.

Like I said… I can ask, right? I hope they do it, because I think it will look better.

The hard part of this whole project was transferring all my notes from my Kindle onto an Excel spreadsheet so they could review it in the format that they requested. I suppose it would have been easier if I edited on my computer in PDF format, then I could have just created the spreadsheet at the same time.

Yes, in retrospect it would have been easier, but if I come across this again, I will probably do it the same way. The reason is that I enjoyed the experience of reading it on the Kindle, as my readers will see it. It just looked “different.”

(And it’s cool having the cover with my name on it appearing in my Kindle Carousel 🙂 )

Ah… vanity… definitely my favorite sin.

Oh! Impromptu movie game! Anyone know who said that line, and what movie it came from?

Self-Editing For Self-Published Fiction (advancedfictionwriting.com)
My Book Is Ready for Publishing (muponisi.wordpress.com)
effective editing: it’s not terminal or is it? (roxieh.wordpress.com)
So what does an editor do, exactly? (heydeadguy.typepad.com)
Life Happens, and the Novel Continues (vitaro.wordpress.com)
Copy editing jargon explained: the standfirst (alisonharmer.wordpress.com)
Self-Publishing ‘Properly’, Or: Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (dan-harris.net)
Self-Editing (niaforrester.com)
Can e-book sellers survive the tablet war? (stuff.co.nz)
Step, step, step … the novel progresses (lindacassidylewis.com)

I have a new word to add to my hate list. It’s “it”.

I am trying to hand my publisher a clean manuscript. The analyzer asked me the remove 5 cases of “there” (no problem) Once case of something else (it was easy, so I don’t remember). It told me that I had 109 uses of “it” and I should remove 52 of them.

This task was definitely a little more daunting. In the end, I was able to get it down to 77 cases. The analyzer is still telling me to remove 20 cases, but these are all in dialog. If you haven’t noticed, people use “it” in dialog, and if you try to remove “it” your characters start to sound like Robots… so my “its” are staying. If the living breathing editors want to mention it, I will deal with it then.

One thing I did learn though, is that narration can be stronger without the word “it”. Here are a few real case examples from LAST WINTER RED

In this first example, I took out both “it” and the second reference to the basket:

She raced past the death and decay and threw her arms around his neck, tipping her basket to the side. Lori grabbed it before the vials spilled. Her eyes narrowed disapprovingly as she set the basket on the table beside them.

This paragraph always bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Now it flows much better… The revise, without the “it” and the second “basket”

She raced past the death and decay and threw her arms around his neck, tipping her basket to the side. Lori grabbed the wicker handle before the vials spilled. Her eyes narrowed disapprovingly as she set the precious parcel on the table beside them.

Here’s another one. Same as before, it wasn’t reading well. We will be removing two occurrences of “it”. I changed “the well” because I used the word “well” in the previous paragraph

He pulled on the strings, and a bucket rose from the well. He tipped it to fill her pail and handed it back to her.

Changed to:

He pulled on the strings, and a bucket rose from the ground. He poured the water into her pail and passed the handle to her, balancing the container with his other hand.

When you pull these examples out of the text, these changes almost seem obvious, but believe me, all my betas read right over this, and I need to admit that the sentences are richer without that annoying little “it”.

How do you feel about “it”?