Back to Work

I took a much needed vacation from work this week, which was great! I cleaned my office, read a few books, hung out with the dogs, etc. Lovely, simply lovely. I'm refreshed and raring to go!

And now it's back to work! My editor called me on Thursday to ask if I had time to input line edits this week on my revisions for DATE ME, BABY, ONE MORE TIME--of course! So she emailed me Friday to give me a heads up on what was coming, and said they'd arrive Saturday morning.

...er..what happened to the Fedex driver? No revisions arrived.

Guess I'm going to be busting my butt starting tomorrow morning! I think I need to turn these puppies around in a day or two.

This is my first experience with having my editor ask me to do a second round of revisions/input line edits. With my other houses, they've input line edits themselves and I don't see the book again until all the changes have been made. I'm so excited about this method, because it gives me yet another chance to go over my book and tighten it up even more, and to make sure the fixes are done in a way that's consistent with my writing style, my voice and my writing. Sometimes copy editors don't see what's in my brain (how is that possible? Shouldn't they be psychic?), so they might make changes that, though technically correct, don't blend as nicely as I feel they should. It's not a good thing to completely mark up galleys because it's so late in the game, so I'm thrilled to get my hands on the ms at this point. Yay!

It was funny, though, (not so funny at the time), because I was in the gym on Thursday, and I decided to check my messages because I was waiting for a call from my agent. Instead it was a call from my editor. She said she'd edited the first 30 pages of my revisions and wanted to send the ms back to me for another round. My first thought was that my revisions were *so horrific* that after only thirty pages, she was giving up. Needless to say, I was so disappointed in myself for letting her down, and so bummed out. So I tried to finish my workout, but I was so distracted I couldn't take it anymore, so I ran downstairs and called her.

As it turned out, she loved my revisions and this is simply her modus operandi to send line edits back to the author for fixes. Oh. PHEW! Major relief! Sounds like there will be alot of changes, though, and I have to turn them around within a day or two, but I'll do whatever it takes to make this book as good as it can be. I'm just so grateful she's doing such a thorough job editing!

You hear so much these days that editors are so busy that they don't have time to edit anymore, so I am so thrilled to discover my new editor is bucking the trend and really spending time on my work. Love her!

posted by Stephanie Rowe @ 8:53 AM