We are getting close with Retribution! I received the results of a line edit last Wednesday and completed my overall review today. I had never had a line edit before. I usually go for a copy edit and then a proofread. Line edits, I found out, are much more intense than a copy edit. The editor (my new one, Crystal Watanabe) looks much more closely (line by line) and makes both corrections and suggestions to improve the story. In the copy I gave her to look at, there were right at 99K words in 189 MS Word pages. I didn’t make a count, but I guess that there were 15-20 markings on each page. Let’s call it 17 on average. Some to keep, some not to keep depending on how I thought the story was impacted. 17 times 189 equals over 3213 comments or potential corrections! That takes a long time to wade through, especially when you have to look at the context and pick and choose what you want to keep. With breaks, that was about 4 steady days of work.
While spelling was included in the line edit, I used Grammarly after the line edit. The corrections offered were more than 1700. This time it only took about a day and a half to go through all of them. Then, you start to see a lot of words or expressions that you use too many times. That means going to the Find button in MS Word and going through each word or expression that was used 20 times or more and changing them. My problematic words were things like, Really, In fact, and even “that.” There were other things to look at, but you get the picture. Not fun, but necessary.
Now it is off to the proofreader. Believe it or not, she will still find issues and errors. I once asked a few of my writer friends if they ever produced a manuscript with no errors. As you might guess, the answer was no. So, when you read a book and find a misspelled word or a comma in the wrong place, have some empathy for the author. We try very hard to catch them all.
Retribution’s next milestone is going into the design phase, which is scheduled for September 11. The launch may be in November.
For all of you who have waited patiently, my thanks. I’ll keep you posted on the next milestones.
Mike
