WHEW!! It’s DONE!

Tip of the Day: When it’s time to sit down and write your dedication and acknowledgment pages, pull out all of your YA books and read through what other authors did. It’ll give you ideas and help you to not forget to thank anyone important in the book creating process.

I can breathe now! Ok, maybe that was a bit dramatic. I’ve been breathing just fine all along but I am done with edits on The Espressologist!! Whoo hoo! And for the curious, here is what that entailed:

1) Editorial letter. My editor sent me approximately a page of overall changes she’d like to see happen in the book. Things like changing the age of some of the characters and removing certain language etc. She gave me about 2-3 months for this but I completed them in about a month or so.

2) Line Edits. Round 1—this was the big manuscript mega marked up. Each page had squiggles and notes galore. I blogged about it here. I believe she told me I had about two months but I busted them out in about 3-4 weeks.

3) Line Edits. Round 2—this was more of the kind of stuff from round 1. Things I missed, new things my editor found, more changes for scenes that still just weren’t working. Here I had a month allotted time but now I was getting good at this stuff and it only took me about a week or two.

4) Final Edits. The end was near! These were all the last final things that still popped up. Mostly missing punctuation, overuse of some words and a couple of scenes that needed more detail. And I got to add in my dedication and acknowledgment page making everything feel oh so real. She gave me two weeks for this but I finished in a week.

And now, just when I’m in the swing of things and getting really good at all this editing stuff and reciting my book in my sleep? I’m done! My book is off to copy edits! What does this mean? Hmmm, well I’m not exactly sure. I know a copy editor will take it and go through it but what does he or she actually do? Let us pause to google.

ANSWER

Ah, here we go. So it looks like the copy editor will make sure all of the grammar is up to snuff, language is suitable, things are consistent, I’m not doing anything illegal etc. It sorta feels like my editor already did these types of things but the copy editor must be the super duper official person to do this. So maybe I’m not as done as I thought? Uh-oh. How bad can this copy editing thing be? Will my manuscript come back to me ripped apart? Any of you pubbed authors want to pipe in on what the deal is with copy editing? More specifically, will I cry when I receive my copy edits? (Remember: 9 months pregnant here. Puppies make me cry.)

I’ll let you know what happens!

Kristina, Miss Soon-to-Pub