Steph, it's more complicated than that (how they've done it, I mean).

Quark's a great program, but it aint for novices, not at this level. And whereas I've only got two lines maximum consecutive with hyphenations on any given page, the fact that every damned page has at least three hyphenated line breaks makes it almost unreadable. (some of them have NINE hyphenated line breaks)

Plus, most of it wasn't necessary. They've opted for what appears to be 10 on 14 Bembo typeface, nice and readable, but looking at the spec sheet? They had masses of room to play. So right now, they've got words squeezed together where one breath of moving whitespace would have lost all need for hyphenations.

They just didn't go back and check their layout. And coming on top of having had to correct their edits to the wrong version of the original MS? Not to mention dealing with the Pillock Copy Editor?

Bored now.

I resent doing their job for them. I shouldn't be better at this than they are. I shouldn't have to be writing "page 48, two line consec hyphenation plus existing hyphenation usage on second line - see "lych-gate" - makes excessive usage look clumsy". I am not getting paid to do that.

I'm not a perfectionist, but I am a professional. Why can't some of these people be pros, as well?

Deb, I'll pin back their arms while you administer the beating.

Can I hit 'em with a rock? Pleeeeeease?

Or maybe an old fashioned printing press?

I think that pelting them with old metal type would be a just and fitting punishment. (I have a book of poetry that was printed with hand-set metal type--there's something wonderful about the flow of the print).

Mini-meara...

Quark's a great program, but it aint for novices, not at this level.

My first real job was as a proofreader at a typesetting shop (they did textbooks) - and let me tell you, most of the compositors they hired didn't know Quark from a ham sandwich. They're cheaper. Of course, the burden was on us proofers to catch their mistakes... and of course these days a lot of places don't even bother to hire proofers anymore.

deb, you've got every right to be pissed off and make them fix it. The quality of the typesetting is a subtle but hugely important element of how people percieve your work.

Desktop publishing is more curse than blessing. Now they think anybody can slap a book together, and standards are coming down to the point where almost anybody can.

Oh, and I'm completely jealous of anybody who has a spouse working so they can write full-time.

And hi! (waves) I have to cannibalize my Buffista time to work on "Deliberate Breath". I'm only up to chapter 6, so there's a long way to go.

Ms H! Haven't seen you in a bit. I have a very pretty girly-love vampire story for the pornanthology, and will send when you're ready.

And the editing stopped abruptly this morning ("Weaver" edits of the Quark-fried Layout of Death, that is) when I discovered that at a crucial point near the end of the book?

They've dumped about three pages.

And I don't mean forgot to include them in the copy. It continues from paragraph to paragraph, midpage, with about three pages missing. Which I am now convinced was deliberate and diabolical and forcing me to heed their evil ways.

And re the spouse working fulltime? Mine does that, but weirdly enough, I wrote 3.5 novels at the office, when I was the only one of us employed. Thank heavens for a secretary whose mama is a world-class and wellknown poet (DiPrima by name), so I got it done because she grokked and was wonderful about it.

But I couldn't do it now, and I'm with you: blessed is the highly-paid alpha geek spouse who enables writing.

Oh, and re the wonderful AU novel with the idiot idea to screw with it by the agents?

May I quote the lady who wrote said novel, in her livejournal?

16 may 2003

"You know, Mr. Hemingway, in chapter 13 you mention a horse, and I think that this would make a great three-book series about this guy and his horse, and if he -- the guy, I mean, not the horse -- if he wore a ten-gallon hat we could sell it as a Western. I mean, you've really aborted your story with all this business about the war and fishing and stuff, because you don't follow through about the horse. Now as I see it, his horse is really a great racehorse except that nobody knows it yet ... "

Suh-nerk!

Are the three missing pages missing from the galleys? If so, yuck!

Do you mind if I ask how "Still Life with Devils" is going? I'm dying to see what changes you've made. Personally, I find that revision/rewriting is the most intensely creative phase of the writing process for me. It's the bit where I figure out what I meant to say, and figure out how to sculpt that meaning out of the rough stone of the first draft.

Anne, missing from the galleys. And it's a crucial section: a bit a few hours before the exorcism, when the two women in the house brush hands and both of them get slammed with this intense vision of what had happened when one of the two murder victims (the weaver of the title) had actually died. And they simply missed it. So in midpage, the paragraph goes from one of them saying something like, ah, you couldn't sleep either, to the other woman retching into the kitchen sink.

Gah.

Still Life is moving nicely. I was actually pounding away at it, and am about halfway through the rewrite/editing thing. I'm right at a scene where the use of feng shui by the killer is out in the open. And this scene is going to be way tricky to redo....

Did you want me to send it when I finish the rewrites? I'd love some feedback before it goes back to Jenn.

Two small requests for writerly input:

When you think of "crimson" and "scarlet", which is the darker shade of red? To me, it's crimson--scarlet is a lovely pure red without any orange in it, like a Chinese wedding dress, while crimson is a rich dark blood red, verging toward burgundy. But I wanted to be sure those were the real definitions, and not overly influenced by colors of college football teams or anything. (Speaking here as a woman who described shades of red that might look good in a bridesmaid's dress to her matron of honor as "anything from Alabama crimson to Florida State garnet.")

I'm about to write a sort of Cinderella's transformation scene wherein my heroine gets all prettied up for her first ball and gets to make a grand entrance down an appropriately sweeping staircase. Which of the following should happen?

1. Only the hero is struck by how beautiful she is.

2. Everyone there is struck by the transformation, in their own separate ways--the hero, his sister, the heroine's doting aunt, her bitchy girl-cousin, the boy-cousin she has a crush on who's just gotten engaged to the hero's sister, etc.

3. Everyone BUT the boy-cousin she's had a crush on notices. He says something kinda patronizing along the lines of, "Why, little Lucy, don't you look sweet."

I'm leaning toward the first or third option, but can't decide which is most effective.