I am happy to announce that my editor (i.e. my mother) has returned the latest draft of Chasing Nonconformity back to me, full of comments and ready for revisions! Upon going through said comments, I found some of them quite amusing, and thought I might share them with you here today. This is part 1 of the images — part 2 will be posted tomorrow — so make sure to come back and see the second half of her excellent and insightful commentary. Also make sure to check out the caption on each photo for context.
Without further ado …
[SPOILER ALERT] The following images contain snippets of text from the Chasing Nonconformity manuscript. Don’t scroll down if you don’t like spoilers!
Mother kindly illustrates a scene for me in order to demonstrate … something.
Mother gets sassy.
Mother gives me her life story at the start of chapter 3.
Mother illustrates her current editing situation.
Mother gets sassy, and then explains the sudden and alarming switch in pen color.
Mother gets really excited about a furniture store upon a mention in the text of Swedish meatballs.
Mother takes issue with my description of a room.
Mother is alarmed by flying eyebrows.
Mother illustrates an awkward water situation.
Michelle Proulx - Author 
Oh, your mother is hilarious. I bet life never got boring growing up. 🙂 Lucky you, Michelle, to have such a cool mom. Good luck with your revisions.
Haha no, life certainly never got boring. It got extremely confusing at times, and sometimes cringe-worthingly embarrassing, but never boring! Thanks for the luck — definitely going to need it 🙂
The Pina Colada picture is my favourite, looking forward to part II.
Hehehe. I think she’s just rubbing it in my face that she got to go to Cuba and I didn’t.
I love the comments! Does she take commissioned work?
Even more than sassy mom, I love the sketches (although I envisioned Eris somewhat cuter, I have to admit)! 🙂
Ha! She barely has enough time in her day to call me, let alone read my books … let alone take commissions! Although I bet if you paid her enough … 😀
She must know the rocket scientist. They have the same color pen. it is so much nicer than red, I think 🙂 Too funny. I want to see those eyebrows fly skyward.
Haha. You may yet see eyebrows flying skyward — I’m pretty sure I had that phrase in there a couple of times, and I don’t think mom caught all of them.
Even though I’m not around much right now, I couldn’t resist this post when it showed up in my email. What a way to start my day – with a smile on my face. Your mother is fantastic. Those are the type of edits everyone would love to have!
Haha. Of course, I left out all the comments about “this doesn’t make any sense”, “this sentence is awkward”, “why would she do this?” etc. But there were a few gems in there, which I pulled out just for you 😀 Glad you enjoyed them!
You knew I would. You and your mom (and your brother) are a hoot! 🙂
Skies above, I wish I had an editor like this!
I can loan her to you, although it’s a family rate, so we’d have to adopt you in order for you to acquire her services 😀
I may have to learn to draw—your mom’s edits are a riot!
Lol, I like that — “a riot”. Excellent way to describe them. Also, I’m pretty sure you don’t need much in the way of drawing lessons in order to reach my mother’s level of artistic skill 😀
And you thought you knew all the copy editing symbols, Candace.
That was hilarious. The joys of editors with sass and drawing ability. 🙂
Sometimes I wonder if she draws these because she knows I’ll get a kick out of them later, or because she legitimately needs to draw them in order to sort things out in her head. I’m thinking it’s a little bit of both, lol.
Keeps you on your toes too. 🙂
Now I understand where your airy brand of humor comes from 🙂
Hahaha everything I know, I learned from my mother. Which is in fact far more alarming than it otherwise appears.
Oh gosh! I have an old story I wrote in 6th grade, and I wish someone like your mother had gone through and given me doodle-critiques on certain things… Like how the main character could crawl like 7 miles with a broke leg in a day, and then take like a week to travel the same distance on horseback. :I
Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me! Then again, my logic influx matrix recently cracked, and purple banana gargle salmon.
xDD Oh, you’re too much, you are. 😉 Gargle salmon right back atcha!
Pingback: Editorial comments from Chasing Nonconformity (Part 2) | Michelle Proulx - The Blog
Reblogged this on and so the story goes and commented:
One of my favourite parts of writing – the reader response! Here with some amusing examples from Michelle Proulx’s trusted reader, her mother.
Excellent stuff! Love the little drawings. Thanks for sharing. Wish I had these on my manuscript edits – makes editing much less tedious!
If I’m ever called upon to edit something, I will be drawing all over that shizzle. I learn from the best 😀
I wish ALL editors had such a sense of humor 🙂
Well, keep in mind that I only shared the funny comments, lol. There were lots of “this doesn’t make sense”, “you need to change this entire chapter”, “Character X is acting completely insane — rewrite”, etc. But the funny ones sort of make up for it 🙂