One More Time

The copyedited manuscript for WHY MERMAIDS SING landed on my doorstep yesterday. My first response, as always, was to groan. Here we go again…

I edit my books as I write them, reading them over and over, tweaking and smoothing and constantly reconsidering flow and pacing and story arc. What that means is that by the time I finish a book, I am heartily sick of it—especially the beginning.

I send it off to my editor, and she comes back with suggestions for places where situations need to be clarified or scenes expanded or added. That usually entails a fairly involved rewrite. Then I send it off once more, and in a few months it comes winging back to me AGAIN, this time with a copyeditor’s line edits. Technically I am only required to look at these changes. But this is the last time I can make changes to the manuscript, so I always take advantage of the several months’ distance I now have and do one final editing.

I will see this manuscript one last time, when I am sent the galleys or page proofs. At that point, I could recite the book in my sleep. No matter how hard I try or what tricks I use, I still see what I expect to see on the page, not what’s really there, with the result that I inevitably miss typos. Also, by this point the story feels tired, all its foibles and faults so glaringly obvious that I begin to fear it’s the worst thing I’ve ever written. My family and friends always tell me, “You say that with each book.” I always go, “I know, but with this book it’s true.” I said it about WHEN GODS DIE, and then took all kinds of grief when the book received its three starred reviews. But the fact remains that, somehow, a book never quite lives up to the vision I had of it when I embarked on its journey. I always feel that I failed to make it as good as I could have, as I should have. Someone—I think it was Chap—said the book he has just finished is always his favorite. That would be nice.