I’m going over the galleys right now for my first young adult novel, due out in the first half of 2010. This is the final stage in the life of a manuscript before it emerges from the cocoon to become a fully-fledged book in your local bookstore. (I have a lot to say some other time about writing for a different publisher in a different marketing section with a whole different set of philosophies than the science fiction/fantasy/urban fantasy world I’ve been working in for the last five years. It’s been fascinating learning just how heterogeneous publishing really is, even at the level of so-called “traditional” New York publishers. But I’ll save that for another post.)
I break down a manuscript’s life into four stages:
First draft: This is the first draft I send to my editor. The novel has usually gone through a couple of revisions already, after I’ve sent it to my trusted first readers and critiquers. This is the version that I think is complete enough to at least convince my editor I know what I’m doing.
Revised draft: The editor sends me a revision letter. For me, this has been anywhere from three to twelve pages long, single spaced and typed. This is where she tells me not necessarily everything that’s wrong with the book, but places where I could make the book stronger: plot holes that jumped out, connections that could be made stronger, characterization that may not be quite right. Based on this, I rewrite the book. Or at least big chunks of it. I’m fortunate in that in every case, my editor’s revision letters have made my books better.
Copy editing: The publisher has a professional copy editor who goes through the manuscript and corrects spelling, grammar, misused words, checks for continuity and clarification. The writer then gets to go through and either accept or override those corrections. Also, this is the time to make any last-minute revisions, additions, and rewritings.
Galleys/page proofs: This is a copy of the typeset pages, showing how the novel will look as a book. This is the time to check for typos, last minute spelling errors, or mistakes in typesetting. (In my third book, I found two paragraphs that had been mushed together in typesetting, as if the sentences between them had been deleted. Panic, I tell you. The error was corrected.) Most publishers issue dire warnings about making major changes at this point. As in, if you suddenly decide that your female detective named Mary should have been a male hit man named George, you’d probably better learn to live with Mary.
After going through this process a couple of times, I’ve noticed a pattern:
Stage 1: I’ve finally finished the book after months of work, it’s as pretty and shiny as I can make it, I’m so elated just to hand in the thing, I’m on top of the world. I love the book.
Stage 2: I’ve now had several months to consider just how bad it really is. Getting a ten page, single spaced letter telling me exactly everything that’s wrong with it only reinforces this feeling. Revision is agony. Instead of fixing it, I’m only making the book fractured and incoherent. I think I hate the book.
Stage 3: You know, it’s really not that bad. In fact, there’s a lot in here that’s pretty cool. Maybe I actually can write. And I can polish up a few more sections. I’ve really accomplished something here. It’s great!
Stage 4: I must have been on crack. How could I have missed all these terrible sentences? How could I have let the book get this far without noticing how boring it is? And now it’s too late to change anything. I’m totally screwed, my career is over. I hate it.
Love it, hate it, love it, hate it. I’ll only start to feel better about it when the ARC’s go out and I start getting feedback which tends to be, on the whole, balanced and mostly positive, and far more objective than I could possibly be at this stage.
So yeah. Voices of Dragons, my YA book. I kind of hate it right now (even though it’s got dragons and fighter jets and a really cool main character who rock climbs and has adventures). The thing I have to do is go back and read the email I got from my Dad when he read the manuscript a couple months ago, the one where he said that he read the whole thing in a day, which he never does, and that he really really liked it. He used two reallys. So, maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe I can resist emailing my editor to say, “Are you sure you want to publish this? Are you sure it’s any good?” Essentially a veiled attempt to fish for compliments and reassurance.
Hell, I think I need a margarita.
I know it isn’t just me. Anyone else have coping mechanisms for when you’re staring at those galleys, convinced (irrationally) that your career is over?
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Dragons *and* fighter jets?
When does it come out?
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Oh, a margarita sounds like a fine coping mechanism to me, Carrie! I’m only at the rewrite-for-the-agent stage, but seriously considering joining you. Sigh. Plus, there’s always the chance that alcohol may improve our opinions of our writing, don’t you think?
Seriously, though, anything that has fighter jets, dragons, and a rock-climbing adventurer? It must be a LOT better than you think! Hope you love it again soon!!!
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If/when I get to the point of having galleys, I shall let you know how it is.
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Fighter jets and dragons? I want to read this one.
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I’ll have to send this one to my nephew; he’s an AF fighter jet mechanic.
I’m glad to see galleys that aren’t too messed up by the publisher, because it means I’m done and I can mentally move on to the next book on the production schedule.
It’s the galleys that are riddled with errors that make me nuts. For the last set, the publisher substituted a square for a numeric scientific symbol, and I had to read it nine times before I felt safe that I’d caught and marked them all.
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Cool! My Dad’s a former AF pilot, which is why I had him read it, to check over my stuff.
You have a healthier attitude about galleys, I think.
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After they accidentally replaced the name of my protagonist with the word for a controlled substance 363 times in one galley, I still eye every one of them that come in with utter dread.
If your dad was ever stationed at Eglin AFB in the early eighties, there’s a good chance I stuck a needle in him.
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Nope, Grand Forks AFB.
Oh, the stories I have about Grand Forks…
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*jaw drops* You have all the, ahem, luck.
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The book is set for March 2010 I think. Trust me, when it gets closer I’ll be letting everyone know!
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I think the best armor against these emotional states is knowing that they follow a pattern, and they are just part of the process. When I teach painting, I always tell my students that paints start with, “This is the best idea ever, what a great painting this will be.” Then around the half point it’s, “what crap. What was I thinking? I’m the worst painter ever.” Then, they work through the worst parts and pull the painting out. It’s not as great as they thought it would be, but it’s OK. They’re happy with it, just not euphoric. And that’s the process. Best we can do is be aware that we do this and when it hits we accept it and move to the next stage.
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I’m editing my first book, and what was inspired months ago now feels very paint-by-number. Rather than a striking portrait, I see primary colors and courier type numbers, dark lines beneath the paint, and every blasted brush stroke.
Posts like yours and others I’ve read here encourage me to keep slogging through. Of course, the fear of it all being a bundle of words rather than a story hasn’t really left.
As a first-timer, how do I cope?
It’s an act of faith. You choose to believe. In your story, in yourself, your talent–whatever it takes to get you through. And when you can’t, or don’t believe, you read something you love, and that reminds you of why you write, and then you believe again.
Or you get good and liquored up before you sit down. Whatever works.
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I totally concur with your assessment of the stages of novel-ing. I’m somewhere between stages 1 and 2 at the moment. Well I’ve finished revisions with my editor with my agency and we’re (hopefully) on the way to getting a publisher. But I know the first edits i did with my current editor. I wanted to cry. It was painful but I managed to make the novel much stronger and got to keep all the characters!!!! Okay, that was overkill with the exclamation points. I apologize.
Comment · May 21st, 2009 at 9:10 am · Link
I had a good friend stationed there. Her letters always started with a variation of, “I want orders to someplace where it’s warmer, like Alaska.”