Editing process

Or, rather, back to the real world after a three-month hiatus working on various edits of my new book. (So much for my promise to blog about the process regularly. I clearly lied.)

Just to update you, here’s what’s been happening since I last posted about writing, which I think was just after I’d submitted the manuscript to my editor after making what’s known as a “developmental” edit. That’s basically where you flesh out characters and scenes more fully, and generally improve the book so that it doesn’t lie flat and dead on the page with nothing truly coming alive.

In my case, this developmental edit was combined with a structural edit, which is where scenes get moved around, cut or extended etc – in other words, fairly big changes are made, and the author often gets outfaced by the scale of the work involved and loses the plot at this stage. I know I do, and my concentration’s not helped by my neighbours’ obsession with knocking down walls at every opportunity – when they’re not hamering the shit out of things for no apparent reason, that is.

Since then, the hammering and wall demolition has lessened a bit (though I bet I’m tempting fate by saying that), and I’ve been able to concentrate on completing a line edit with the help of my editor at Avon Books. That kind of edit focuses on the smaller detail, and is followed by a copy-edit, where the manuscript gets checked for clumsy grammar, spelling errors and factual inaccuracies.

Once both those edits have been completed, the book goes off to production to be typeset and, when it comes back to the author after that, it’s the first time the 100,000 words you’ve been wrestling with for months finally morph into something resembling a real book. That’s always a real buzz, and I’m thrilled with the font that’s been chosen for the titles and chapter headings.

Finally, the typeset proof is proofread – both by the author and a professional proofreader – to pick up any remaining errors, spacing problems etc, and that’s the part I finished dealing with last week.

Now I’m working with my editor on things like the blurb that goes onto the cover, while also waiting for the cover itself to be revealed to me – cue massive excitement, combined with a degree of trepidation.

Covers are worth a whole post on their own, so let’s just say here that it’s super-stressy when you’re waiting to see what your book – the fruit of all those cancelled social events and all that grumpy, batshit-crazy pacing around the house at 3am – will look like when it finally hits the shelves.

That’ll be happening on June 30th, in case you’re wondering…

After a manic period of panic-stricken, all-night writing sessions, I now look exactly like a corpse. However, I don’t care. I’ve finally delivered the manuscript of my new book to my editor at HarperCollins, and now I’m planning to sleep for a week.

After that, once I’ve found out what my editor thinks of the manuscript – which is the nerve-wracking part – then I’ll be starting what’s known as a structural edit. This is the first part of the editing process and could easily take several months, as it can involve making major changes like deleting scenes and/or writing new ones; moving chapters around; improving the characterisation of existing characters, or getting rid of those who aren’t earning their keep.

After that, the next stage is what’s called a line edit. That’s when I’ll be focusing on the finer detail, and once I’ve finished that, then the manuscript will be proofread and any last-minute minor changes will be made.

Meanwhile, the team at HarperCollins will also be working on the cover design and what the back cover “blurb” is to say, and then they’ll be sending out advance copies of the book to reviewers. (That’s another very nerve-wracking time.)

Eventually, the finished manuscript will be sent to the printers to be turned into a proper book. When that happened to my last novel, I was lucky enough to be invited to watch the process happen at Clays of Bungay, and I had a wonderful time and learned a lot.

The names of authors whose books Clays have printed are sign-written on the walls in their reception area, and read like a “Who’s Who” of famous writers. I couldn’t believe an unknown like me was keeping such illustrious company!

As you can probably tell, I found the whole experience incredibly exciting, and if you’d like to know more about what printing a book involves, I’ve written about it here and here. (There are lots of photos and some videos, too.)

My new book is due to be published in the Spring of 2016, and I’ll keep you up to date with what’s happening to the manuscript between now and then.

Back to life, back to reality…

That nerve-wracking moment…