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October 27, 2004
Galleys: the love/hate relationship
Alesia, from Halloween party central...
I hate galleys. No, I’m not talking about the tiny kitchen on a boat kind of galleys, although I probably wouldn’t like those much, either, given that I’m claustrophobic and get a little carsick. So tiny boat kitchens would probably send me screaming to the nearest porthole.
But, I’m actually referring to the complete manuscript of your book that your publisher sends you as a last chance to catch any mistakes/typos/whole chapters that were inadvertently stuck in the wrong place by somebody drinking vodka at the typesetters . . .
Well, that last thing only happened once.
First, I will say right up front that I love and adore and feel totally fortunate to even have the chance to HAVE galleys to complain about!! I’ve dreamed of being a published author my whole entire life, so I should dance happily through the house clutching my galleys, right?
I did, the first time. But now it’s just painful. . .
The problem is that I’ve already read SUPER 16 about a zillion times. So, I kinda know what happens. And what the jokes are. And how it ends.
Which sucks the fun right out of it.
Copyeditors don’t like it when you make up words, by the way, so my teenager’s vocabulary always winds up coming back to me looking pretty bizarre.
Plus, I have another chance to look at my own writing and think, hmmm, that’s AWFUL. Or, more rarely, Hey – that’s pretty good. Or, even: hey, what if I change this whole chapter?
(FYI - Publishers don’t like it if you change an entire chapter at this stage. We’re talking about hand-written little notes they have to input.)
Plus, by now I see what I think I wrote. It’s a Gestalt thing, I think. So I’m not even sure I could catch all the typos. Sadly, I’m enough of a perfectionist that I have to try . . .
Back to work.
Hugs,
Alesia
Posted by Alesia at 1:08 PM | Comments (1)
Comments
I'm right there with you. I can normally tell when a book is done when it reaches the point where even the thought of reading it one more time makes me physically ill.
Posted by: Whitney at October 28, 2004 7:58 PM
