{"id":1104,"date":"2011-10-16T19:31:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-16T08:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2011-10-16T19:31:22","modified_gmt":"2011-10-16T08:31:22","slug":"finished-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/finished-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Finished! Sort of . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

I have finally finished the structural edit of The FitzOsbornes at War<\/em>, and have sent it off to my publishers, and now I feel like this:<\/p>\n

\"'Jove<\/a>
'Jove Decadent' (1899) by Ramon Casas<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n(Except I’m not really feeling decadent, just exhausted.)<\/p>\n

For those who aren’t sure what a structural edit is, the nice people at Alien Onion<\/a> have provided a helpful explanation here<\/a>. In the case of The FitzOsbornes at War<\/em>, my editors (two of them, one in Australia and one in the United States) sent me a long letter full of questions and suggestions, such as:<\/p>\n

Could you explain in more detail about Toby’s plan to do [mysterious thing]? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and <\/p>\n

It would be good if there was a scene that actually showed<\/strong> Sophie doing [important thing], instead of her merely talking about it, three months later.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and <\/p>\n

It’s great that Toby tells Sophie all about [shockingly awful thing], but how come she never mentions it in her journal ever again?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

It would be nice if that Big Declaration of Love scene was even more<\/strong> romantic and soppy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, because my editors are very efficient, they also pointed out some smaller issues that usually fall into the area of copy-editing<\/a>. For example, Toby’s birthday suddenly moved from March to February, and Sophie’s favourite dress became mysteriously longer over the course of a year. Oops! All fixed now. <\/p>\n

The manuscript now goes off to the copy-editors, who will pore over it with their magnifying glasses and identify all my narrative inconsistencies, historical errors and convoluted sentences, so that I can fix those, too. Then the whole thing goes off to the typesetters, who print out proofs, which are then proof-read by everyone, including me. So, as you can see, the book is practically done!<\/p>\n

I’ve also had a look at three potential covers for the Australian paperback edition of The FitzOsbornes at War<\/em>. They are all beautiful, and I have sent off my feedback on each one. I thought the first was a tiny bit too modern, the second was a little too similar to the first two Montmaray Journals<\/em> books, but the third was just right<\/em>. Well, with a few tiny tweaks . . . Anyway, we shall see.<\/p>\n

I’ve also just heard back from my American editor, who has already read the revised final chapter of the new draft and it made her cry<\/strong>! (Because it was so emotionally-involving and heart-rending, not because the writing was so bad that she regretted having ever signed up the book in the first place.) Yes! My job is done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have finally finished the structural edit of The FitzOsbornes at War, and have sent it off to my publishers, and now I feel like this: (Except I’m not really feeling decadent, just exhausted.) For those who aren’t sure what a structural edit is, the nice people at Alien Onion have provided a helpful explanation … Continue reading Finished! Sort of . . .<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-montmaray-journals","category-this-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1133,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions\/1133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}