Oh, not so terribly picky, really. :) It just startles me, sometimes, how many mistakes get through.
Okay, this isn't really passionate or angry enough to be called a rant, but here's what happens.
When I'm working on a script with an editor, it can get to be REALLY hard to pay attention to the details. As the writer, I see so many different versions of any given passage, it gets to be fairly impossible to keep track of every detail. Lemme 'splain:
The first thing that happens is that I write a chapter, usually in one or two sittings. I'll go over it quickly for grammar and/or word transpositions. Then I'll leave it alone and come back to it the next day. I'll make sure it does everything I wanted to do, which means usually adding in things, deleting things, and generally mucking around with it for a while. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get something to come out the way I want it. So far, I've now seen three or four versions of the chapter. Let's call it three, cause it makes the math easier.
Then I give it to a group of wonderful lunatics who have volunteered to Beta read for me. I get comments back from them over the next several days (as I proceed with new material) which I consider and incoporate into the book. The Beta Foo crowd almost always either points out something I need to fix or says something that inspires me to make more alterations. Let's say three of 'em get me to make changes to a chapter (sometimes it's more, sometimes less). Now I'm up to six versions.
(While I'm doing this chapter, meanwhile, I'm writing new material as well, which is ALSO morphing through versions on a quasi-random scale. Sometimes I'm working on two novels at a time, too.)
The manuscript gets done, and zip, off it goes to the editor. The editor reads it and sends back a list of questions and necessary changes. Depending on how much time I spent being brainless, it might take anywhere from ten or twelve hours to two or three weeks to go back in and make all the changes. If they're big enough, I usually can't resist going back and modifying the CHANGES, too. That brings me up to seven (and a half) versions of the story.
It goes back. The publisher now line-edits it, which calls for mostly minor changes, fixing bad sentences, that kind of thing. That kind of work is usually pretty quick. It brings me up to eight versions of the manuscript.
Then it goes to the printer, and I get the proofs. I go through checking details and looking for errors in the proofs, but to be honest spending an hour doing that is enough to make me want to flush my head down the nearest toilet. I'm probably not the most skilled proofreader, but I force myself to do it one page at a time. Sometimes the printer will have added in his own misspellings, transpositions and general flubs, in addition to any which remained. I do my best to spot them, and then any corrections go back, which brings me up to nine versions of the manuscript.
So, you know. I've got nine versions of better than four hundred basically identical pages of novel running through my brain (and usually while working on the next book(s) besides).
I miss things! :)
My editor only has to put up with maybe three versions, but she has to do it at the same time she's doing it to as many as thirty OTHER novels.
In the past, books were covered by a much larger and more focused editorial staff, but times are a changing. Most editors work really ridiculous hours, including reading while at home, in New York, on much less pay than you'd think. They have a much higher workload than in the past, a much smaller support staff, and they still have to put up with just as many wacky writer personalities. They have a tough job.
NONE of which excuses the mistakes. I've tried to go back and have them fixed in new print runs when they are kindly pointed out by the readers (mercifully enduring only a single version of the book). In a perfect world, they wouldn't be there--but I hope that this explanation at least it makes them understandable.
Besides. You should see them BEFORE I've had people helping me patch the holes. Graded on a curve, they're nearly perfect. :)
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Re: Dresden Files
Date: 2004-09-11 08:38 pm (UTC)Okay, this isn't really passionate or angry enough to be called a rant, but here's what happens.
When I'm working on a script with an editor, it can get to be REALLY hard to pay attention to the details. As the writer, I see so many different versions of any given passage, it gets to be fairly impossible to keep track of every detail. Lemme 'splain:
The first thing that happens is that I write a chapter, usually in one or two sittings. I'll go over it quickly for grammar and/or word transpositions. Then I'll leave it alone and come back to it the next day. I'll make sure it does everything I wanted to do, which means usually adding in things, deleting things, and generally mucking around with it for a while. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get something to come out the way I want it. So far, I've now seen three or four versions of the chapter. Let's call it three, cause it makes the math easier.
Then I give it to a group of wonderful lunatics who have volunteered to Beta read for me. I get comments back from them over the next several days (as I proceed with new material) which I consider and incoporate into the book. The Beta Foo crowd almost always either points out something I need to fix or says something that inspires me to make more alterations. Let's say three of 'em get me to make changes to a chapter (sometimes it's more, sometimes less). Now I'm up to six versions.
(While I'm doing this chapter, meanwhile, I'm writing new material as well, which is ALSO morphing through versions on a quasi-random scale. Sometimes I'm working on two novels at a time, too.)
The manuscript gets done, and zip, off it goes to the editor. The editor reads it and sends back a list of questions and necessary changes. Depending on how much time I spent being brainless, it might take anywhere from ten or twelve hours to two or three weeks to go back in and make all the changes. If they're big enough, I usually can't resist going back and modifying the CHANGES, too. That brings me up to seven (and a half) versions of the story.
It goes back. The publisher now line-edits it, which calls for mostly minor changes, fixing bad sentences, that kind of thing. That kind of work is usually pretty quick. It brings me up to eight versions of the manuscript.
Then it goes to the printer, and I get the proofs. I go through checking details and looking for errors in the proofs, but to be honest spending an hour doing that is enough to make me want to flush my head down the nearest toilet. I'm probably not the most skilled proofreader, but I force myself to do it one page at a time. Sometimes the printer will have added in his own misspellings, transpositions and general flubs, in addition to any which remained. I do my best to spot them, and then any corrections go back, which brings me up to nine versions of the manuscript.
So, you know. I've got nine versions of better than four hundred basically identical pages of novel running through my brain (and usually while working on the next book(s) besides).
I miss things! :)
My editor only has to put up with maybe three versions, but she has to do it at the same time she's doing it to as many as thirty OTHER novels.
In the past, books were covered by a much larger and more focused editorial staff, but times are a changing. Most editors work really ridiculous hours, including reading while at home, in New York, on much less pay than you'd think. They have a much higher workload than in the past, a much smaller support staff, and they still have to put up with just as many wacky writer personalities. They have a tough job.
NONE of which excuses the mistakes. I've tried to go back and have them fixed in new print runs when they are kindly pointed out by the readers (mercifully enduring only a single version of the book). In a perfect world, they wouldn't be there--but I hope that this explanation at least it makes them understandable.
Besides. You should see them BEFORE I've had people helping me patch the holes. Graded on a curve, they're nearly perfect. :)
Jim