I have a t-shirt that reads, “Stay Clam and Proofread.” I could use several more, in difficult colors, because proofreading just takes over my life in the last three weeks or four weeks prior to publication, and here we are for Sekaran.

I have applied the corrections from one proofreader so far (this does not count the casual typos found by non-proofreaders). In between sending the draft to this proofreader (Anna S) and getting it back, I read the whole thing myself on my computer, tweaking and trimming and fixing whatever typos I found. I can therefore tell you that my ratio is roughly 1/22 compared to Anna. I literally caught less than one in twenty. Lots were subtle, I’ll say that.

I have another set of typo corrections in front of me now, which I will do tonight … maybe tonight and tomorrow depending on how long this takes … and my bet is that the set of typos Linda S caught will overlap by about 50% with the ones Anna caught. If you both weren’t especially gifted, I would predict a lot less overlap, more like 20%. We’ll see what it really turns out to be.

MEANWHILE

Yet more proofreading, though it’s not the same. I mean, I’m reading the draft on my phone. I catch relatively few typos that way (some, yes, and some of them are humiliatingly obvious and how is it POSSIBLE to miss those?), but I do A TON of tweaking; an average of one tweak every other page or so, which means hundreds. Things like changing “almost” to “nearly” because I decide it sounds better, or changing the order of sentences in a paragraph, or deleting a few words here or there, or noticing that someone “murmured” five times on one page. This is exceedingly annoying and tedious. Not the reading part, the part where I actually go through the manuscript and make the changes. I am completely aware that no one will be able to point to overt changes, but I feel it does make a noticeable difference to the overall smoothness.

However, I also wrote the next section of the story that focuses on Thaniel Hale and his first encounter with Ubez. This story will in fact lead forward, eventually, into another book in that universe. I know the title of the next book, for a wonder. (Adamantine.) I know the main pov characters. (Erec Chatham and Desya.) I know the plot, in very broad terms. (Redacted.) I just don’t know when I’m going to write it. Next year is already looking desperately crowded.

Regardless, the Hale story is going to go to slightly over 15,000 words, I think, and therefore will appear in chunks in my newsletter and then drop whole onto my Patreon. Still not sure about the actual upcoming October newsletter. I sort of feel I should write something Halloween-y for October. On the other hand, not sure I have time, plus the newsletter will go out weeks before Halloween. We’ll see.

During the coming week — proofing proofing proofing! Plus preparing for Archon, which is this coming weekend. I’m going to drop posts related to some of the panels each day, so that I can say, if so inclined, “And there’s a post about this with examples at my blog.” For several panels, that might be useful.

Oh, also, I did make time to take all the dogs to the park this past weekend, early in the morning because it’s been nice and cool in the morning. I wanted specifically to see if Ish was willing to go for a walk in an exciting location, and he was. He had a significant episode of back pain recently. (I know, everything landed on Ish over the past three months, old age is terrible.) That’s much better, but he doesn’t want to go for walks the way he used to, so I thought the park might be different. It was, so I had a chance to watch him move, and I think he has a specific weakness in the right rear leg. Not lameness. Doesn’t look like pain, thankfully. Instability of some kind that’s causing him to move that leg in an odd diagonal path. That’ll be something to keep an eye on. Big trackmeet of some kind, so he got to meet a few kids, and he liked that. They all did.

Fall

Back to proofreading!

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