We’ll start with the update, since that’s what I’m currently the most excited about. Approximately forty-seven seconds ago, I sent the newly-shortened, vastly-improved manuscript for Imminent Danger and How to Fly Straight into It off to my iUniverse editorial consultant. She will send it on to the Return Evaluator, who will … evaluate it? The name is kind of self explanatory. Anyway, I should be getting the results of my return evaluation back within 7-10 business days.
If everything goes really well, the evaluator will love the new, shortened version, and be so impressed with my flawless grasp on English grammar that she’ll recommend me for publication and Editor’s Choice designation on the spot. In all likelihood, of course, she’ll probably find a few things for me to improve on, and recommend a professional copy-edit. But, as I’ve said before, I’m all right with that. I’m trying the iUniverse route this time, and although it might be expensive, I’m going to wait until I see the finished product before I start forming opinions.
So anyway, the book is finally moving forward, and I’m incredibly excited about that. Yay!
American vs. Canadian Grammar
I’m Canadian, and as such, I use Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Americans do not use Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Since I’ve struggled with the conversion, I thought I might share the fruits of my knowledge with you here. Some of the examples are direct Canadian-to-American issues, will some of the examples are just basic grammar know-how that I recently discovered I’ve been doing all wrong.
Alright
“Alright” is not a word. The correct usage is “All right”. Apparently “alright” was used a lot in the old days, but it’s fallen out of proper use now, and therefore we shouldn’t be using it. All right, everyone got that?
Punctuation in Quotation Marks
Consider the following example:
Janine raised her arms in a gesture that clearly meant “come hither”.
Check out the end of that phrase. In Canadian punctuation, that sentence is fine. The phrase “come hither” is self-contained, and the period goes outside the quotation marks. In American punctuation, however, you stick the period inside the quotation marks, as follows:
Robert’s face was screwed up, as if to say “I’ll kill you all with my bare teeth.”
God
I personally think this one is open to debate, but the American grammatical standard requires that the word “God” always be capitalized. Always. No exceptions. If you’re talking about multiple gods or goddesses, that’s all right. But if you are referring to one, all-knowing, all-seeing deity, you capitalize the name.
Oh
This one annoyed me. The basic rule of thumb is that any time you use the word “Oh” — as in “Oh, no!” — you have to put a comma after it. I think it looks silly. I think “Oh yeah!” reads much more smoothly than “Oh, yeah!”. But apparently that’s the standard, much as I am loathe to admit it.
Ellipsis
The ellipsis is, of course, the “…” in sentences. Here are some examples of incorrectly used ellipses:
“He’s so… gorgeous.”
“He’s so…gorgeous.”
In case that didn’t make it obvious, the problem here is the spacing. An ellipsis needs a space before and after. So, the sentence should properly read:
“He’s so … gorgeous.”
If you’ve been skipping the space before the ellipsis, like I’ve been doing, the new spacing is going to look weird. But it’s also the correct spacing, so get used to hitting that space bar!
In conclusion, grammar is annoying.
It occurs to me that only one of those examples actually had anything to do with differences between America and Canada. Oh, well.
Let’s start off by getting the exciting news out of the way. Ready?
I finished editing my book!
So that’s, ya know, pretty good.
Just kidding. I’m ridiculously excited to be finished. No more late night editing sessions. No more second-guessing myself about what I should cut and what I should keep. No more rousing arguments with my mother over the whimsicality of the word “whirled”. Ahhhhhh …
I’m pretty psyched, not going to lie. So, what next?
I’ve sent the newly revised and shortened manuscript of Imminent Danger and How to Fly Straight into It out to my quickest reader friends. They’ll devour it over the course of a week, and give me back their impressions. Now, hypothetically the book should be flawless, so really what I’m looking for is a confirmation that the book isn’t too fast-paced now that it’s much shorter. I don’t think it is, but again, that’s what the readers are for.
Once they finish reviewing the manuscript, I’ll sent it back to my Editorial Consultant at iUniverse. I was on the phone with her today, and she’s advised me that I should get a Return Evaluation. The Return Evaluation costs $249, although she mentioned that she will be able to underwrite the cost for me, so that’s great. Remember my post about getting my Editorial Evaluation back? A “Return Evaluation” is basically the same thing. It’s even done by the same editor.
Now, here’s where things get tricky. So when I got my first Editorial Evaluation back, they advised, A) shortening the manuscript, and B) getting a copy-edit. A Return Evaluation gives the editor another chance to advise me about how to improve the book. The shortening thing is taken care of, and assuming he/she doesn’t find any new, glaring flaws, I should be good, content-wise.
That leaves the copy-edit recommendation. You see, I now have a second chance to convince this editor that my book doesn’t need an expensive copy-edit. How do I do that? By visiting The Chicago Manual of Style Online website, and signing up for their free 30 day trial, I can access their full style guide for a month. That means I can try to bring my manuscript up to the American Publisher’s Standard before re-submitting it to the editors at iUniverse, all without spending a dime.
The edits shouldn’t be extensive. I figure it will be mostly along the lines of capitalizing certain words, sticking punctuation outside of quotation marks, etc. So the plan is to spend a few days trying to copy-edit on my own (a difficult task, since as the author I’m already way too close to the material). But I’ll give it my best shot, because $2000 for a copy-edit is a lot of money, and I don’t want to spend it unless I have to.
Some of you might be wondering at this point, why pay for a copy-edit at all? Why are you even using iUniverse? Why not self-publish independently through Smashwords?
Here’s my reasoning. I already paid for the iUniverse publishing package waaaaay back in May. It’s a done deal, so no point second-guessing. Therefore, I’ve decided that, for this book, and this book alone, I’m going to go the full iUniverse publishing route. That means doing the Return Evaluation if they say so, getting a Copy-Edit if they say so, etc. Everyone I’ve talked to at iUniverse has been really great so far, and they seem very enthusiastic about helping me, so I’m 67.8% confident they’ll do right by me.
When I get the finished product in my hands, I’ll look back and judge if paying whatever the total amount comes out to was worth it or not. If it was worth it, then I’ll probably work with iUniverse again. If not, then I’ll scrap iUniverse and self-publish everything myself from now on. Call it me being foolhardy, naive, and gullible. Call it a learning experience. Whatever you want to call it, that’s my plan, and I’m sticking to it!
So last night my mother and I sat down, as we are wont to do, and settled in for another editing session. I thought people might enjoy getting a look into the inner workings of our editing process (spoiler alert: it isn’t much of a process), so I recorded it, trimmed it down, and turned it into a youtube video for your viewing pleasure. Thus, without any further ado, I give to you:
We shall begin with a simple question. Were you intrigued by the title of this post?
No: Curses! Perhaps I was being overly optimistic about my own brilliance.
Yes: Huzzah! You are a person of incredible wit and taste. I applaud you, sir or madam.
Enough shenanigans. “Chasing Nonconformity” is the working title of my current WIP (work in progress). It’s the sequel to Imminent Danger and How to Fly Straight into It, and basically picks up where the first book leaves off. Like Imminent Danger, the sequel features space battles, sexy mercenaries, six-armed reptile warriors, and a generous helping of ridiculousness.
I wrote Chasing Nonconformity while I was living in South Korea, so I imagine that had some influence on the various characters and events of the story. I definitely borrowed heavily from the Korean language when making up names for planets, aliens, foodstuffs, and assorted sci-fi paraphernalia.
To give you some idea of where it’s at, I shall now share with you:
Michelle’s Official Writing Process
1. Write.
2. Wait six months. Review and revise.
3. Wait six months. Review and revise.
4. Give book to my mother.
5. Receive book from my mother, heavily scribbled upon with red pen and “constructive criticism” that makes my soul weep bitter, bitter tears.
6. Review and revise.
7. Give book to friends.
8. Receive book from friends, heavily scribbled upon with pen that starts in red, then shifts to blue/black/green/purple when they inevitably lose their red pens. Rejoice from all the supportive and optimistic feedback.
9. Review and revise.
10. Give book to my mother.
11. Receive book from my mother, heavily scribbled upon with red pen and “constructive criticism” that makes my soul weep bitter, bitter tears.
12. Review and revise.
I wanted to include the step of “Actually publish the book” on that list, but as it hasn’t happened yet, I felt including it on the list might be premature. With Imminent Danger, I’m somewhere around “Step 37: Review and Revise. Again. For the final time, this time, dammit!”
With Chasing Nonconformity, however, I’m waaaaaay back on Step 6. Exciting times are ahead, my friends! First I have to finish completely re-writing the middle section of the book, then head to the end and cut out a ton of plot. Hopefully I can use all this extraneous plot in future sequels, but I’m not going to beat myself up if that doesn’t happen.
So that’s basically what I’m working on right now. I’ve been kicking around the idea of attempting NaNoWriMo this year (because my attempt at Camp NaNo this summer went so well), so ideally I’ll get Step 6 of Chasing Nonconformity done before then.
I appear to be babbling. I’ll stop. What’s your writing process? Where are you at with your current WIP? Do you have any tips for cutting down my current writing process to something a little less insane?
Random video of the day: a chilling look at the “Dungeons & Dragons” phenomenon.
Once again stealing someone else’s idea, I present to you The Living Notebook’s latest blog post. Basically, Harper Voyager (the sci-fi/fantasy subsidiary of Harper Collins) is accepting un-agented sci-fi manuscript submissions from October 1 – 14th. They’re looking for about a dozen new manuscripts, which they will publish digitally (not in print, although the site does say they’ll think about it if your sales are good enough). Anyway, click your way over to The Living Notebook’s site to get the link to the Harper Voyager contest.
So … is spreading the word of this awesome opportunity actively working against my own interests? Oh, absolutely. But I figure that, hey, if you have a sci-fi manuscript better than mine, then you deserve to get signed. So polish up those manuscripts and start submitting!
My one qualm with the Harper Voyager contest is that, while I would *love* to be traditionally published (talk about street cred!), they’re only doing digital publication (at least at first). I want to see my book in print. So in the extremely unlikely event they actually choose my story for publication, does that mean I’d have to give up my dreams of seeing Imminent Danger in print? I’d probably lose my copyright rights once they pick it up, so I wouldn’t have the option of printing the book myself. Thoughts?
My other qualm (okay, so I lied about only having the one qualm) is that I don’t want to put my self-publishing plan on hold on the extreme off-chance that Harper Voyager picks my manuscript out of thousands. What would happen if I self-published my book, and then discovered three days later that Harper Voyager wanted to buy my book? I mean, again, traditional publishing yay! But I would have already gone through all the effort of self-publishing (which I already paid for), only to have to cancel everything after a few days/weeks. The Harper Voyager website states that they will accept self-published books, no problem, and I suppose I already have paid for the self-publishing, so there’s no real point in stopping the self-publication process. Still … can you imagine? “Hey guys, remember how I finally self-published yesterday? Yeah, just pretend it never happened. Trololol.”
Anyway, head over to The Living Notebook’s blog and check out that Harper Voyager link. Best of luck to all of you who decide to submit a manuscript!
It’s official — Imminent Danger and How to Fly Straight into It is now under 100,000 words. I believe it’s sitting nicely at 99,300-ish, and we’re not even done editing yet.
We’re on chapter 32 of 44, so I’m guessing the final word count will be somewhere around 95k. That’s still a very decent length for a YA novel, and the writing is getting much better and tighter as a result, so I’m really happy that we decided to do this final round of editing.
At the current editing pace, we (my editor/mother and I) should be done the shortening/revisions by the end of September. Then I’ll send out the new and improved book to a handful of select readers (aka people who can promise to read the book in a week), fix whatever (hopefully!) minor issues they find, and then send it off for copy-editing.
The other upside of getting the book under 100k words is that the copy editing will cost less. 100k words = $2200. 95k words = $2090. That’s about a hundred dollars in savings, which is good by me! I’m all for saving money. Then again, who isn’t?
In other news, I have a stack of self-published novels on my hard drive that I need to read and review. I keep meaning to get started on them, but I always seem to get distracted. Last week I had a legitimate excuse — I was temping for a telecommunications company — but now I don’t really have any reason not to get started on the reading/reviewing.
My next hurdle will be to decide which book to read first. Should I go by the date each book was sent to me, or by how much I want to read the book? Hmm …
In other, other news, I’m headed to Washington with my mother this week for a mini-vacation before winter starts. That’s the nice thing about having a flex-time job — vacation is very easy to book, since I don’t have to request time off or reschedule shifts. On the downside, I’m really bad at flex-time work, because I procrastinate like nobody’s business. Ah well. Anyway, I’m really excited for Washington. I’ve been once before, when I was about twelve or thirteen, and I remember that it was really awesome. I’m probably going to hit up the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, etc.
After a great deal of effort, I managed to sit my manager/editor/mother down for that vlog I promised you guys last week. She was reticent at first, but quickly warmed up to the whole vlogging thing. I think she had almost too much fun, to be honest. Well, you can judge for yourselves. Thus, without further ado, my VLOG:
In other news, I have recently acquired a temp job for an internet company. I will be standing in front of a table, handing out magnets and asking random passersby, “Do you have your internet set up for the new school year?” all next week, 9-5. Woot! I have a feeling I will be unutterably bored by the end of the first day, but hey, money is money. And you can quote me on that. At least it’s only a week, lol. And the $400 I make will help me pay for my copy-editing.
Also, my blogger friend Keri Peardon has recently released a new ebook — check it out here. It’s on sale 50% off today, so give it a look see. I haven’t read it yet, but I did read/review two of her novellas, and I really liked them, so I’m guessing Acceptance (her new book) will be good as well.
Yesterday I began my epic quest to cut 21,307 words from Imminent Danger. Gah. I knew it would be a big job going in, but cutting that many words is something you can’t really understand until you’ve experienced it for yourself.
The first thing I did was print out the book, then grab a red pen and flip through it. I wasn’t doing a line-by-line edit, I was looking for entire sections that I could chop out. You know, scenes that were fun but didn’t contribute to the story, unnecessary exposition, too-long battle scenes, etc. So I spent a few hours doing that.
Then I went into Word and cut out all the sections I’d circled. I was pretty excited, because I got rid of several large chunks, so I was hoping for a massive reduction in word count. The result? I cut 3,000 words. Now, that’s a lot of words. But it’s nowhere close to 20k. Back to the drawing board.
Since cutting out major chunks didn’t work, I’ll have to go through the story line by line. And while this is easily the most onerous editing task I’ve ever undertaken, I’m buoyed by the thought that when I’m finally finished, my book will be better than ever before. What I really need is one of those eighties training montages, where there’ll be shots of me frowning at my manuscript, sitting in different positions around my living room, drinking coffee, falling asleep at my desk, etc. And then two minutes of montaging will pass, and I’ll thunk the completed manuscript down on the desk while triumphant music plays in the background.
Like that’s going to happen.
I’ll keep you updated as I go. I’ve cut out approximately 3,600 words so far, with another thousand hopefully going today. I need to be done soon, because I need to get the book published before the end of October if I want to take advantage of the Christmas season.
As for getting the book copy-edited, I’m still on the fence. A few of you have said that $2,200 is way too much to spend on editing, which I agree with. The other alternative, however, is to do it myself, then run the risk of missing something and being eternally embarrassed when everyone and their mothers point it out to me. Here are the three options, as I see it:
Option One: iUniverse copy-edit
$2,200, 2-3 weeks, guaranteed placement into the Editor’s Choice program (which opens the book up for other assorted awards)
Option Two: freelance copy-edit
I don’t know how much freelancers charge. I assumed it would be less than iUniverse, but the first link I looked at was $30 per 1000 words — e.g. $3,000. Anyone know any good, cheap copy-editors?
After the freelance copy-edit, I would fork over another $250 to iUniverse for a return evaluation, where they would consider me for Editor’s Choice (placement not guaranteed).
Option Three: do it myself
This one is free, obviously, plus $250 for the return evaluation. My current thought is to start with this option, submit the manuscript, and see what happens. If I get the Editor’s Choice, grand. If not, I can consider getting a professional copy-edit. Although if the manuscript isn’t up-to-snuff, I’m paying an extra $250 for the return evaluation with nothing to show for it.
I recently discovered the “poll” function on WordPress, so I’m putting this to a vote. What do you think? What should I do?
Ain’t it purdy? I gotta use polls more often. And thanks for listening to me ramble!
Internet funtimes
I’m pretty sure everyone in the entire universe has seen this video, but I nevertheless present it here for your nostalgic viewing pleasure (note: the song rocks, but the real fun begins at 0:50):
You probably gathered this from the title of this post, but I made a vlog! I set up my webcam, chose a nice background in my apartment, and just went nuts. Thus, without any further ado:
How’s my vlogging technique? Any tips? I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the video, so hopefully it isn’t too mind-bogglingly terrible.
Now, what silly picture from around the interwebs shall I share with you today? How about … this!
Photo courtesy of Nakai SZH. Source: engrish.com
Copyright law states that images can be used on your blog if you are using them to parody or review. Thus, a review of the picture above:
I find it very amusing. Mistranslations are an excellent source of comedy.
I don’t want to be sued for copyright infringement, so here is my photograph of turtles. Enjoy.
The big news in my little part of the cosmos is that I got my Editorial Evaluation back! To remind you, I’m self-publishing through iUniverse, and the first step of the publication process is they have an editor go through the book and do an evaluation. At the end of the evaluation they give you recommended edits to make–which basically means they tell you which of their editing services they want you to buy. But we’ll tackle that topic in another post. So, without further ado …
What the Evaluation said!
I actually got the email about my evaluation being complete right before I was about to head out to Stratford to go see Pirates of Penzance. The play was pretty good — I love the Tarantara soldiers. Since I really wanted to read the evaluation, I printed it out and brought it along for the ride. I shall now give you a summary of what I read.
So what they basically do is break down the evaluation into several categories. Then in each category they have a checklist, where the answer can be either “Yes” (as in, yes, you rock, this is good), or “Needs Work” (which is fairly self-evident). The first category deals with the marketing text (correct genre, is the work suitable for the target audience, etc.). I passed that one with flying colours. Next up: title. Apparently my title is appropriate for my book, so huzzah, I guess.
Now for the Opening. My first page grabs the reader’s attention — probably a good thing for a book to do. I began to notice at this point that aside from the checklist, the “evaluation” mostly consisted of the editor copying chunks of the book into the evaluation document and basically providing a summary of the plot. Which is fine. At least it shows they read the book, so they do have some idea of what they’re talking about.
I ran into trouble at the “Basic Premise and Tone” section. The plot and everything is fine — what tripped up the editor is the word count. The editor starts off saying:
“The author has wonderful writing skills and a vivid imagination … Relationships are fully developed. In fact, some of the humorous banter reminds one of the relationship between Princess Leia and Han Solo from Star Wars.”
COPYRIGHT NOTE: All quotes from the Editorial Evaluation in this post belong to iUniverse. Please don’t sue me. I’m harmless.
Woo! I love compliments. Especially when Star Wars references are involved. Kudos to my editor for being awesome. But remember how I mentioned the word count being an issue? Here’s the editor’s thoughts on that:
“Regarding the language level — at 121,307 words, this novel is too long. Especially in this tight economy (and even before it), traditional publishing houses normally do not take on books longer than 100,000 words, because of the cost of publication. In fact, most publishers of YA novels suggest that they should be around 45k-75k words long. It’s always best to adhere to required word length parameters. Not doing so is enough to prompt rejection from traditional publishing houses.
Besides that, practically every novel can benefit from pruning and tightening. There are places were cuts would improve the plot of this book. One place is where explanations of details about the fantasy world slow down the pace of scenes. Every little cut an author can make will tighten the plot and allow her to develop the most important characters and plot points.”
Phew! So basically, my book is too long. I’d suspected this was the case, but I guess it took the Editorial Evaluation to really drive that home. I’m sure my shortening woes will deserve a blog post of their own, so we’ll move on for now.
Next up was “Structure, Plot and Pace.” I got another “Needs Work” on “Does each incident or action propel the reader forward or provide needed but succinct background information?”. This ties into the word count thing. Once I cut unnecessary scenes, this should no longer be a problem.
Dum-de-dum, flipping through my pages … here we go! Here’s some random quotes:
“The last one-fourth of the book contains a rousing, all-out space war. Battles and clever one-liners are fun to read.
An Epilogue ends on a note of humor, with a hint of a sequel to come.”
Yup. So basically, I need to make it shorter. Le sigh.
Moving on to “Setting” — everything fine there. Characterization also received thumbs ups across the board, as did Dialogue. Now we’re really moving along! Then we hit … Basic Punctuation and Grammar.
Yes, you guessed it. I scored a “Needs Work” here. Noooooooes! Considering that I had approximately 15 well-educated individuals read over the manuscript before I submitted it, I’d really hoped I’d get a good score here. The errors they found actually weren’t that bad. I spell “all right” incorrectly (I spell it “alright”, which is sometimes correct, but definitely not for an American market). I didn’t capitalize “God” (for shame!). And there was a discrepancy in quotation punctuation that is entirely because I’m Canadian and didn’t know that Americans punctuate differently. Oh, and they didn’t like some of my commas. So yeah, that happened.
Final notes!
This post is getting long. I’ll try to type faster (that’s how you make posts shorter, right?). So at the end they give “General Comments about the Manuscript”, which is basically a reiteration of what was already said. Since quotes are fun, here’s a quote:
“This author has remarkable writing skills and a unique vision. She has also wisely accepted the help of a large group of helpers/editors (listed in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book). That makes this book a well-conceived, professionally-written, and enjoyable read.
The only weakness is the excessive length, but I feel the author has the skills to successfully do some cutting that would tighten the narrative and bring it into accepted word length parameters. Then the book will be absolutely awesome!
The author says her dream of becoming a published author has come true. I predict she can go far in her writing career, and I wish her all success in her future writing.”
As you can imagine, I’m pretty pleased with this evaluation. It sucks that I’ll have to do more editing (six years of editing and counting!), but I really do want this book to be the best it can. As my mother says, “This book is your introduction to the world. So you want it to be amazing.” I certainly do, mother, I certainly do.
And now for the “Editorial Rx Referral”
This is the part where they tell you what edits you have to do if you want to be in the “Editor’s Choice” program. More about this in a later post. But basically, this is a rewards program that gets you extra benefits, a nice “Editor’s Choice” logo on your book, and other assorted things from iUniverse. It absolutely does not translate into book sales, although it definitely doesn’t hurt potential sales.
The editor says:
“First the author is encouraged to do some pruning and tightening of the material. Then a Copyedit is recommended to fix errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Optional: A Developmental Edit would help the author cut and tighten.”
What this basically means is that if I want to be in their Editor’s Choice program, I need to get my book copyedited. I don’t have to do it through iUniverse, but if I get it done somewhere else, I have to pay a $249 resubmission fee, and then if it doesn’t pass the evaluation, I’ll be right back where I started (and considerably poorer).
iUniverse copyediting costs $0.022 per word. For a 100,000 word book, that works out to about $2,000. That’s a lot of money. At the same time, there are evidently punctuation/grammar errors I am making that I didn’t even know about. Because I’m a Canadian trying to write for an American market, there’s the added complication of our different grammar/spelling rules. And they also look at things like internal consistency, cross-checking facts, bringing the book up to standardized style guidelines, etc.
So what now?
Now I cut down the book by 21,307 words. Once I’m done that, I seriously consider whether or not I want to get a Copyedit done. Again, more on that in a later post. But if you have any opinions on any of this right now, please comment and let me know!
On a more musical note …
No Doubt has released a new song! Maybe they did this months ago, I don’t know, but I just found out about it now, so here you go!
Michelle Proulx - Author 
