Here is you second installment of your writing questions answered!
Note: I’m getting married this weekend (yay!) and so things have been quite hectic around here these last few weeks. We’ll be leaving on our honeymoon next week as well. This means that I’m prepping some content ahead of time (more of these writing questions answered) and will also be sharing some breezy posts on the wedding and honeymoon shenanigans over the next few weeks. Some of the honeymoon posts will be for paid subscribers only, so if you want to see all of our adventures be sure to subscribe, or email me for a scholarship for a paid subscription. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming in September.
“I constantly notice typos when reading fiction - what’s the typical editing process like?” Chaotic.
The truth about writing and editing about 100k words or so is that, no matter how many eyes you have on that manuscript, you’ll never find more typos than after a book is published. Why? Because there is no God. That’s why.
Seriously though. Usually first drafts of a book will go to your primary editor. They will highlight some of the more glaring spelling and grammar issues, but their job is primarily around making the book good. They are looking at tone, at clarity, at flow. They are trying to help your book become what you said you wanted it to be. You go back and forth with this editor for a couple of drafts. When you don’t want to make any further changes to structure or story, and you are pretty close to the final layout, the book will go to a copyeditor who will look more closely at your spelling and grammar. Then you get a copy (usually printed on actual paper) of that final draft with the copyeditor’s notes and you go through them all and approve or reject the suggested changes.
So, with all of this, how do so many typos happen? Well, because first of all, it is a lot of words. We tend to breeze a bit through paragraphs as we read through larger documents. Small errors often don’t stick out if the piece still feels right. And if you have gone through parts of this manuscript three or four or five times already, it’s really easy to skip over small issues. Second, at every stage of editing except for the very final copyedit review, you are likely introducing new elements to the manuscript - new sentences, paragraphs, even whole new chapters. It’s often in these new additions, that haven’t gotten the benefit of your previous edits, that give birth to a whole bunch of embarrassing mistakes.
So then the book is out in the world, and I guarantee the first time you do a public reading from your finished book, you will stumble across an error or two that will have you pausing to ask yourself, “how the hell did this happen???” And the answer is, once again, that there is no God. Only the brutality of book deadlines and the fallibility of our very tired eyes and brains.
Every other typo that you don’t end up cringing at during public readings will be brought to your attention via dozens and dozens of readers who are either pretty sure that nobody has told you about this typo yet (and trust me, you will hear about the same typos over and over ) or those who are incensed that you have subjected them to the insult of a typo that in no way affected their ability to comprehend the book, or even sentence that the typo lived in - and yet it somehow ruined their entire day, and now they will make sure it ruins yours as well.
Any tips to protect yourself before you have an agent? Get to know other writers and talk to them about the business of writing. We often talk with other writers about craft but rarely about business. We are often made to feel like if we are real artists, we won’t care about things like money or proper credit or even respect for our time and labor. Talk with other writers all of the time. Talk to them about commissions. Talk to them about editors and the editing process. Bring up anything that makes you feel a little skeptical or sets off even the smallest alarm bells. And keep talking with other writers even after you get an agent. Agents are supposed to sell your book and protect you through that process. But there is so much more to being a writer that is beyond that scope. I’m fortunate to have an amazing agent that I trust implicitly, some agents really suck and don’t have your best interests at heart. Some writers that I love and respect had agents who were actively trying to talk them out of amazing projects that they wanted to do because the agent wanted to always pick the path that made them the most money, even at expense of a writer’s craft, morals, work satisfaction, or career growth. They only realized that they were being steered onto the wrong paths after talking with other writers who had much more fulfilling, supportive, and mutually beneficial relationships with their editors.
How do you reconcile your original thoughts/wording with editor’s changes? Can you push back? Yes, you certainly can push back, and sometimes it will be very important to. Here is my general approach to editor’s changes:
Why did the editor make the change? Can I see the editor’s reasoning behind the change? If they didn’t explain and it’s not evident to me, I will reach out and ask for clarification.
Does the change bring my work closer to my stated goals? Does the change clarify or help focus the piece? If yes, it’s probably a change to keep. If not, I usually push back or ask for clarification.
Does the change sound like me? If I agree that the editor is right and change is necessary, but the particular change that the editor suggested doesn’t fit my writing style, I rework it in my words and explain to the editor that I like their change and that this is how I would implement it to fit my writing style.
At the end of the day, your name will be on that masthead and you will be the one that readers blame if an editor’s changes fuck up your piece. Always read edits very carefully before agreeing to move forward. If you need to push back on changes be sure to do so before the piece goes to print. It is often very difficult, if not impossible, to make changes to a piece before it goes live. Respectfully pushing back on editor’s changes won’t hurt your relationship with an editor worth their salt - even deciding to pull the piece altogether if you can’t come to agreement will still likely leave you with a good working relationship - but hitting an editor with a bunch of issues with the piece after they’ve already gone live just might end that relationship altogether.
Hope this is helpful to y’all! If you have additional questions that you want me to cover in future installments, leave them in the comments!
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How the hell did this happen?
The second (or third, or fourth) set of eyes is what I find valuable in editing too - I become so familiar with my own words that the typos don't stand out at all.
Thank you for this. I am going back and forth with an editor on my manuscript right now, and I feel like typos are spontaneously generating in paragraphs I've been over 18 times. I love your writing advice; it always feels so practical and relevant.