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prized

Behind the Scenes: Copyedits

I received my copyedits for Prized two weeks ago, along with marginalia from my editor.

A.Copyedits and Marginalia

We work with the Track Changes feature of Word at this point, and when I first received the manuscript, I shrank down the pages to get a general idea of how many comments I’d be dealing with (see Photo A).  The purple comments from Jill Freshney, the managing editor, have to do with formatting, so I largely ignore those. The green ones are from Suzette Costello, the copyeditor who, incidentally, also… Continue reading

The Terror and the Trust of Not Outlining

I’m a seat-of-the-pantser.  I’ve done books using an outline before when I plotted out romances in ten chapters (major intimacy in Chapter 7) so I know it’s possible, but that is not how I wrote Birthmarked, and it is not working for the sequels.  The main problem is that I have to be in the scene, imagining it, in order to live where it’s going with Gaia.  Since she can’t see into the future, neither can I.  If the reader is to be surprised, I… Continue reading

Learning Revising from Picasso

Postcards of Guernica

Postcards of Guernica

In the Reina Sofia Museum of Madrid, in the white-walled gallery that showcases Picasso’s Guernica, across from the masterpiece is a series of six photos Dora Maar took of the painting while it was in progress.  If you have the stubborn tenacity to thwart the crowd, you can stand in front of each photo and examine it closely, then go on to the next to see what Picasso changed and what he kept the same.  The horse rises.  The eyeball light emerges from… Continue reading