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desperanceTired now.
I have spent most of the working day in the Lit & Phil, from not-quite-opening to not-quite-closing. Too much coffee and some fine sossidge sammiches sustained me (and I apologise to all for the shocking ambiguity in my last, which allowed some deliberately unfortunate misreadings; I have let it stand, as a monument to heedlessness), and I have slurped and chewed my way through about one-third of the manuscript. Which may be a record, but not one I particularly want to challenge. That nit-picky attention, the sheer level of concentration demanded exhausts me to the point where I want to huff and groan aloud, even in the Silence Room...
(Talking of which, O tempora o mores pt 2: people! You cannot trust people any more. For years now, years, we who work in the Silence Room have had a secret: to be specific, a secret extension lead, that lives coiled up behind a two-vol folio History of London. When we see a newcomer in need of power at distance, we introduce them to it, and show them where to leave it when they're done. I did this without thinking, a few days back, to a student who needed to plug in a desk-lamp on a table far from power. I left before he did, trustingly. This morning? No extension lead. Bah, humbug...)
Still'n'all, even after poring over it for more hours at a stretch than human mind should be able properly to bear, I still do not hate this book. It seems, by and large, to be doing what I wanted. Not well enough, of course, but still.
Also, I do not hate this edit. I used to dread copy-edits, because I ended up stetting page after page, eighty or ninety per cent of the changes (to the point where one editor quite genuinely asked if I'd prefer not to be copy-edited at all, because the process became rather pointless if I was just going to undo everything afterwards) - but since my books moved from Britain to America, not so. I have learned to love and trust my copy-editors, their light touch, their concern. Either I have got better, to the point where people no longer think I need rewriting; or USians approach the job differently, are perhaps not all novelists manqué, or whatever the problem was. Whatever: this is a very light edit, and it is making me very happy. Also, in the pages-and-pages of notes (no queries! this may be the first CEM I've seen that didn't come with at least one page of queries...) they have included maps of Taiwan. How cute is that?
Still, home now and not going to work no more no more. Have wine (on prescription, thanks to Dr Marquise), have nibbles. Have book (yay Justina!), have TV, have radio, have DVDs, have distractability.
Have shopped; have hibiscus flowers, in syrup. Somebody should probably bring me some fizz.
I have spent most of the working day in the Lit & Phil, from not-quite-opening to not-quite-closing. Too much coffee and some fine sossidge sammiches sustained me (and I apologise to all for the shocking ambiguity in my last, which allowed some deliberately unfortunate misreadings; I have let it stand, as a monument to heedlessness), and I have slurped and chewed my way through about one-third of the manuscript. Which may be a record, but not one I particularly want to challenge. That nit-picky attention, the sheer level of concentration demanded exhausts me to the point where I want to huff and groan aloud, even in the Silence Room...
(Talking of which, O tempora o mores pt 2: people! You cannot trust people any more. For years now, years, we who work in the Silence Room have had a secret: to be specific, a secret extension lead, that lives coiled up behind a two-vol folio History of London. When we see a newcomer in need of power at distance, we introduce them to it, and show them where to leave it when they're done. I did this without thinking, a few days back, to a student who needed to plug in a desk-lamp on a table far from power. I left before he did, trustingly. This morning? No extension lead. Bah, humbug...)
Still'n'all, even after poring over it for more hours at a stretch than human mind should be able properly to bear, I still do not hate this book. It seems, by and large, to be doing what I wanted. Not well enough, of course, but still.
Also, I do not hate this edit. I used to dread copy-edits, because I ended up stetting page after page, eighty or ninety per cent of the changes (to the point where one editor quite genuinely asked if I'd prefer not to be copy-edited at all, because the process became rather pointless if I was just going to undo everything afterwards) - but since my books moved from Britain to America, not so. I have learned to love and trust my copy-editors, their light touch, their concern. Either I have got better, to the point where people no longer think I need rewriting; or USians approach the job differently, are perhaps not all novelists manqué, or whatever the problem was. Whatever: this is a very light edit, and it is making me very happy. Also, in the pages-and-pages of notes (no queries! this may be the first CEM I've seen that didn't come with at least one page of queries...) they have included maps of Taiwan. How cute is that?
Still, home now and not going to work no more no more. Have wine (on prescription, thanks to Dr Marquise), have nibbles. Have book (yay Justina!), have TV, have radio, have DVDs, have distractability.
Have shopped; have hibiscus flowers, in syrup. Somebody should probably bring me some fizz.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-23 05:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-23 07:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-23 05:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-23 09:20 pm (UTC)