Please welcome author, Ruthie Knox, as she tells us about the complicated editing process. But first, I'll share my thoughts on her latest book,
About Last Night.
Author: Ruthie Knox
Publisher: Loveswept
Date of publication: June 2012
Sure, opposites attract, but in this sexy, smart eBook original romance from Ruthie Knox, they positively combust! When a buttoned-up banker falls for a bad girl, “about last night” is just the beginning.
My thoughts:
Ruthie Knox is quickly becoming a favorite author of mine! I thoroughly enjoyed About Last Night. Nev and Cath may be opposites, but they are so suited for each other. The chemistry alone just sizzles off the page. Nev is definitely smitten from the first, but Cath takes a bit longer to admit how she feels. I loved both characters because while they are opposites, they are really searching for the same thing..their true self. I don't want to give away the end, I'll just say that what Nev does for Cath in the end had me choked up. If you haven't had a chance to pick up this book, take some time to check it out!
On
Writing, Editing, and Errors by Ruthie Knox
Recently, I read an amazing book — Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer. The
hero is a starving ex-con, the heroine a pregnant, widowed mother of two who
needs a husband. The romance is knock-your-socks-off fabulous. Super-awesome-amazing.
Morning
Glory is an older
title, originally published in 1989 but reissued for Kindle. And I love that —
I love that it’s possible for me to hear from a friend about a book issued thirteen
years ago, to find it immediately, and to buy it and download it and start
reading it on my Kindle.
There was really only one thing I
didn’t like about Morning Glory, and
that was this: every time the word “preciate” was supposed to appear in the
text — which was pretty often, given that this is a book set in late 1930s
Georgia, and people were polite back then — the book actually said “predate.”
As in, “I predate that, ma’am.”
This is the kind of error that makes
readers scratch their heads and wonder, “Did anybody even read that book? What do editors do,
anyway, if errors like that can show up in print books? Do they just spend
their days sipping lattes, or what?”
Now, in the case of Morning Glory, we’re almost certainly
looking at an OCR error. That is, a print version of the book was scanned, optical
character recognition software was used to turn the scanned image files into
text files, and then some combination of spell-checker and human eyeballs checked
over the files for errors but missed the substitution of “predate” for “preciate.”
Fair enough. But we’ve all seen
worse errors, haven’t we? I know I have, and I used to wonder how they got in
there.
I mean, the author writes the book, right? And then the editor combs over it
and helps make sure every word is in the right place, and someone checks all
the grammar and whatnot, or maybe that’s the proofreader, who knows, and somehow
in the end the book comes out. How can they fail to catch the errors? Where’s
the quality control?
Except, the thing is, that’s not
really how it works. The book you buy isn’t so much a perfectly combed-through
finished opus as it is a snapshot of where the manuscript was at on the day it
finally got transmitted from editorial to production. Which isn’t to say that
perfect isn’t the goal — it is. It’s just to say that humans aren’t perfect.
Here’s how it really works: The
author writes a manuscript, and probably rewrites it, gets opinions from
friends, rewrites it again, sweats blood over it, etc., until by the time the
author thinks it’s good enough to submit to her agent or editor, she can’t even
really read it anymore, because she’s
read it so many times, she’s lost the ability to see it. But her test-reading
friends tell her it’s good, so she sends it off. The editor reads it and loves
it (except for A, B, C, and D, which are totally fixable), so she offers a
contract, and the book gets bought.
Next, the editor tells the author
about A, B, C, and D, and the author revises. And it’s difficult, but the
author still loves the book, and the editor has a fresh perspective and also
loves it, so that’s gratifying for everybody. The editor reads the revision. So
much better! Except maybe C still needs a little work, and also now that A, B,
and D are fixed, she’s noticed E and F are problems. Can the author fix those?
Sure!
Once the author has worked through E
and F, it’s time for “line edits” — that is, line-by-line, nitty-gritty
adjustments to the whole darn book. These are hard work for the editor,
sometimes painful for the author, but all in the interest of making the writing
livelier and the whole book sharper. But unless they’re very carefully done and very carefully
checked, line edits also lead to new errors, new repetition, new weirdness —
some introduced when the line edits are inputted by the editor, some when the
author reads and makes changes, and some more when the tracked edits are “accepted”
into the manuscript file.
And by the time the editor’s been
over the book with a fine-toothed comb, she’s read it four or five times and
lost her fresh eyes, too. So now the editor can’t really read the book anymore
without missing problems, and neither can the author.
Next comes copyediting, where
clarity, consistency, and correctness are the goal. Fiction copyeditors do
things like change “10” to “ten.” They also look at timelines and consistency
errors, so they tend to ask questions like, “Is she still carrying her purse?”
and (in one memorable case for me) “Did she ever put her shirt back on?”
Copyeditors bring fresh eyes to the
project, which means they find new errors in the book and suggest new ways to
fix them. Which is awesome. But unless they’re very careful and their work gets very carefully checked, they can also introduce new errors to the
text. And so can the author when she checks the copyedits. And so can the
copyeditor when she accepts the changes.
Sensing a theme?
Finally, the edited book gets laid
out by the production department, and production also sometimes introduces
errors when it’s coding e-books for vendors or laying out print books for the
page. The laid-out and/or formatted book gets proofread by several sets of
eyes, most of them weary because they’ve read the book nine times already, and then it’s off to an e-reader or bookstore
near you.
Probably with some errors in it.
So on behalf of editors and authors
everywhere, I just want to say that we do try to bring you the cleanest possible
product. It’s just that a book is a moving target, and perfection is difficult
to achieve.
We predate your understanding.
Where to find About Last Night:
iBooks
By Blood by Ellen Ullman
How can I abuse you? Let me count the ways. That is what was going through my mind through the whole half of the book that I managed to stomach. I love this author, but I just couldn't finish the book. The heroine, Cathy, is raped repeatedly by the hero, Jonathan, in the beginning. She is also beaten and berated by him, but she falls for him anyway. I know this was supposed to be a bodice ripper, but this was just abusive and I couldn't understand how readers think this behavior is even remotely romantic. I like alpha males, but Jonathan is nothing but a bully and a rapist.
Home by Toni Morrison 
Grossed me out! I understood going in that it was about a middle aged woman that kidnaps a teenaged boy. While that's kind of ew, I thought maybe it might get a Gillian Flynn type treatment. The subject matter is just so messed up, but the writing is awesome and the characters are train wrecks but you love them anyway. This wasn't that book. The main character would drug the boy then do things like lick his stomach. When she got to sucking his earlobe, that was enough for me.
Triple Crossing was confusing. Maybe if I read it in print form, with some highlighters and post-its I could have had a better time with it. It started off fine, but I was listening to the audiobook and I had trouble keeping all the characters straight and who they were and how they fit into the story. The reader made everyone sound like Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite, even the main character who was supposed to be an Argentinian Italian from Chicago, yes he was Spanish speaking with a funny accent, but I didn't think he sounded like Speedy Gonzales. Anyway, so that was my gripe with that book.
