Ginger, I love that one. It's just....wow.

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That packs a punch, Ginger.

WRT copyediting, I'm now wondering if in some cases where I was annoyed by modernisms and/or Americanisms in a Regency I should be blaming a stupid CE rather than an incompetent author--maybe the author was too new and cowed to question the edits, or not all the "Stet, dammit, stet!" corrections went through.

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Probably sometimes... Ginger, I liked that, but found relating to it painful. Does that make sense?

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Ginger, do you ever want to flash people who do that? Just, to make them deal and get the hell over it?

I used to get really irritated with people who would do that "one fast stare, jerk head away" right after they rebuilt my hands, post car crash; the hands, back then, were essentially lumps of raw flesh, and unhealed skin grafts. I knew, even then, that the reactions they were having were essentially superstition, but it still annoyed the crap out of me. And I talk with my hands, but I made a point of waving them around, even when it hurt like blue stink to do it.

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I thought copyeditors were a dying breed, are they really still commonly used?

They're commonly used at St. Martin's. Actually, Matty Groves makes book number seven to be published by a mainstream house, and I have never not seen a copyedited version before it went to production. I liked my St. Martin's copy edit for Plainsong; four post-it notes. That will never happen to me again, I'm pretty sure.

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I mean, I may talk the hind leg off a spitting llama in meatspace,

(I happen to know this is factually true)

but in writing, I'm far more likely to say "the night sky was abalone and ink" than I am to say "the night sky, shivering under a load of stars like tiny golden irridiscent pearls, fell upon her bowed shoulders like mantle of purest indigo velvet", or whatever.

And the first is freighted with meaning, the second is just a messy load of words obscuring story, character, and narrative.

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Heh. Cindy, no, that wasn't at you - I had actually been talking about the whole "but amateurs do it for love" thing in email, on an entirely different subject, earlier, so it was fresh in my memory curcuits. Robin, yep, I'm with you, but have you noticed how the whole idea of "no one's paying you for it yet so you must suck!" has crept into common intonation when the word is used in speech?

Oh, you made it clear it wasn't to me, when you said you were going off on a tangent. I actually agree with your point, anyhow.

That copy editor story made me shudder.

Ginger, your drabble is powerful.

"the night sky, shivering under a load of stars like tiny golden irridiscent pearls, fell upon her bowed shoulders like mantle of purest indigo velvet"

Hee. Someday, we should start a group project in which we write a story using only the worst stuff we can come up with. Isn't there a contest for "It was a dark and stormy night," sort of writing?

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Isn't there a contest for "It was a dark and stormy night," sort of writing?

Yes.

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Thanks, Cashmere. I didn't realize it was only for an opening sentence. Well, we could certainly all enter. Deb should submit that, "[...]the night sky, shivering under a load of stars like tiny golden irridiscent pearls, fell upon her bowed shoulders like mantle of purest indigo velvet," sentence, provided it wouldn't damage her professional reputation to do so.

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I think the majority of published works do see a copyeditor at one point or another, but it's more of a rushed process now than it used to be, and never pays well. A good copyeditor describes a stylesheet before beginning (and checks it with the author, to establish the norms of, e.g., forms of speech), and whenever anything beyond a basic, obvious change is made, querys the author.

In the age of email, there's no excuse any longer for not checking before making a substantial change. Then again, any time the CE queries, there's the chance that the author will say, "No, I meant for 'decimate' to mean 'eliminate 90%,'" and the CE will just sigh.

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