Posts Tagged With: imminent danger

9 Things I Learned From My Copy-Edit

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

I finished going over my copy-edit this evening. All the changes are made, the manuscript has been sent back to iUniverse so they can do God knows what with it (hopefully publish it, lol), and I officially have nothing more to do with the book until they send me cover proofs and final print proofs. Woo! Talk about a weight off your chest. Now I can focus on other things, like my job, and not living in a forest of cardboard boxes.

But you don’t care about that. You came here for the list!

9 Things I Learned From My Copy-Edit

1. The first paragraph at the start of a chapter is not indented. The same goes for the first paragraph after a scene break.

2. According to American publishing standard, when indicating possession, this — Chris’ — is not correct. This — Chris’s — is correct.

3. A list of adjectives do not require as many commas as you might think. This — fluffy, white hair — is not correct. This — fluffy white hair — is correct.

4. Once you’ve defined a foreign word in italics, you don’t have to italicize it any more. I’m given to understand that you can still italicize it if you want to, but it’s not necessary.

5. Instead of using italics to put emphasis on a certain word, try to let the sentence structure emphasize for you.

6. Ship names are italicized, but a class/type of ship is not italicized. E.g. The Enterprise v.s. Boeing 747.

7. The following dialogue tags — “she panicked”, “she laughed”, “she sighed”, “she smiled” — are not actually dialogue tags. They are verbs that should not be applied to dialogue.

8. Percentage should be written as XX percent — e.g., 97 percent.

9. The correct phrasing is “Far be it from me to say”, not “Far be it for me to say”.

Also, having finished reviewing the copy-edit, I can now officially pass judgement on my copy-editor. Ready?

Was the copy-edit worth $1900?

No. I definitely did not get $1900 worth of editing done to that manuscript. Not by a long shot. On the plus side, I did learn several things (see the above list), so it certainly wasn’t a complete waste of money.

How was the quality of the copy-editor?

He seemed fairly competent. I caught five mistakes overall — four typos, and one word that was randomly bolded. He had a weird obsession with semicolons that I didn’t agree with, and he also seemed to have a vendetta against commas, so I had to add a handful back in. He also failed to notice that some of the chapter titles were misaligned. To be fair, I didn’t notice that either, but still!

Overall judgement?

Not worth the money, but I did learn many new things, so we’ll call it a draw and move on.

 

Unrelated media of the day:

Categories: iUniverse, Self Publishing, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 68 Comments

Yes, I’m still alive (more or less) + Copy-Edit news!

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

You may have noticed that I’ve been suspiciously absent from WordPress for the last fortnight. You may not have noticed. Either way, I’m back, and I’m psyched to be here. Specifically, I’m psyched not to be sitting in a freezing cold office highlighting endless paperwork. Anyhoo …

I spent the last three hours trying to catch up on all the blog posts I’ve missed over the last two weeks. Do you people have any idea how much you write? Good grief. I had to restrict myself to reading 1 out of every 6 posts, or I would still be scrolling through my Blogs I Follow list tomorrow morning. So if I missed a major update in anyone’s life due to my extreme skippery, I apologize.

My temp job is officially over, and I have about $1600 and no life to show for it. Still, an interesting experience was had, and I extracted several promises from my co-workers that they would buy my book when it comes out. So … call it a win?

Speaking of my book … nah, just messing with you. The Michelle Proulx Official Life Update isn’t over yet. Patience, my young padawans.

This month I also moved apartments, which I think I may have mentioned, and we’re officially settled into our new place. It’s smaller and cheaper than the last place, but the location is way better (right beside the mall), plus the heating is centrally controlled, so my mother can’t turn down the heat whenever she gets too hot. Muahahahahahaha.

Okay, now we’re actually going to speak about my book. The major news is that I got my Copy-Edit back! As I expected, the edits are all minor things — commas moved around, dashes added, etc. The editor seems to have some sort of weird addiction to semicolons, because he’s added about a dozen. Interesting. Right now I’m going through the edited manuscript — basically re-reading the book – to make sure the editor didn’t do anything crazy. He seems fairly sane thus far (Chapter 18, baby!), so I have high hopes.

Once I finish my review, the manuscript goes back to the editorial folks at iUniverse, and the design process begins. Woo! I’m really excited. I sent them cover design ideas a few weeks ago, but I haven’t heard anything back yet, so I have no idea what the design team has done with them. Hopefully something epic.

I really need to get dressed and unpack/review my book, so I think that’s all for now. I have great plans to make another vlog episode, which may or may not succeed depending on how my showering/unpacking/book reviewing goes.

Hope you’ve all had a great two weeks, and I look forward to reading about your lives/accomplishments on a more regular basis.

Oh yeah, and before I forget — I gave up on NaNo. No time + no energy + packing/moving/job/other job/copy-edit review = no NaNo. Le sigh.

Unrelated media of the day:

What if Aladdin always looked like that?

Hehehe. And here’s another ridiculous K-Pop video to brighten your day:

Categories: iUniverse, Random, Self Publishing, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Help out a fellow blogger + update on my book!

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

My friend Matthew Cook contacted me this morning with what he termed a “huge favour”. Now, I’m inclined to give this gentleman whatever he wants, because he is one of my best beta readers/editors/copy-editors/proof-readers. Not to mention he’s just a genuinely good guy. Plus, we used to play D&D in high school, so we go way back to the days of trolls and imps and THAC0 (major cool points if you got that reference).

Anyway, he’s still in university, and he’s taking a journalism course that requires him to make a blog and acquire followers. In a strange twist of academics, his grade depends not on the contents or quality of his blog, but on how many followers he acquires. Weird, right? Anyway, here’s the situation in his words:

Hi, my name’s Matt! I’m a journalism student developing a blog about cartoons – webcomics, political cartoons, and daily comic strips. I also have my own cartoons posted, about whatever seems funny to me at the time. My blog is a part of a big journalism project and I need to get more followers if I want a good grade. So if you’re interested in cartoons, come visit the site and comment if you have the time; either positive or negative comments help (the negative comments let me know what I’m doing wrong!)

Here’s a sample of his cartoons:

I figure we bloggers must stick together, and Matt’s grade depends on how many followers he can get, so let’s give him a hand, shall we? Here’s a link to his blog.

Update on my novel:

So I got my Return Evaluation back. Surprise surprise, they recommended a Copy-Edit. Siiiiiiiigh. Well, at least it’s an appropriate length now. So there’s that.

My plans to chat with my Editorial Consultant about booking the Copy-Edit have thus far failed, in that I emailed her and she hasn’t responded. And now I’m working 9-5 (at least, for the next few weeks), which also happen to be her office hours, so hopefully she’ll be flexible about setting up a meeting with me. Once I actually get into contact with her, I will hypothetically purchase a Copy-Edit, get that done in a few weeks, and then FINALLY get the darn thing published.

It’s going to happen. I swear.

Unrelated gif of the day:

Thanks Jeremy :’)

Unrelated video of the day:

Background info: A professional voice actor reads aloud the review a young man made about an online game. Hilarity ensues.

Note: Funny begins around 0:35.

Categories: Random, Self Publishing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 30 Comments

Blogging is hard …

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

I have literally spent the last hour sitting at my keyboard, attempting to write this post. Each time I get halfway through a post, I decide it’s stupid and then delete it and start over. Sigh.

Since I apparently have nothing intelligent to say, I suppose I’ll settle for giving a brief life update. You can barely contain your excitement, can’t you? CAN’T YOU?

So I got a call from Manpower (the temp agency) yesterday, and today I started a new job at a major Canadian bank, the name of which I cannot disclose on pain of a death most gruesome. It’s a 2-3 week gig, depending on how fast we get the project done, and (again, not going into details) basically involves data entry. But the challenging kind, where you need to actually pay attention to what you’re doing, solve problems, try to suss out what the scribbled writing and blank mandatory fields are trying to tell you, etc.

It’s at a bank, so I have to wear nice clothing. I’ve spent the last eight months or so wearing sweat pants (They’re comfy! Don’t judge!), so this was a new and exciting step for me. Needless to say, I felt very fancy today.

In non-work related news, my mother recently had her friend from Florida over to visit for the weekend, so I was booted from my room and took up residence on the couch. That was … fun?

I’m still waiting for my Return Evaluation to come back for Imminent Danger. It’s been about 9 business days now, and I’m getting kind of impatient. And by impatient, I mean obsessively checking my email, even at times of the day when it is completely unreasonable for someone to be contacting me. I really want to see my evaluation, if only to learn whether or not I have to fork over two grand for a copy-edit.

This concludes my rambling. It is 10:30 now, and I must go prepare for bed if I want to have time to watch Glee before I go to bed. Yes, I watch Glee. I’m a girl. It’s allowed.

Update: I spent too much time finding videos to share with you. It is now 11 pm. No Glee for me.

 

Unrelated media of the day:

Jeggings are silly. Enjoy.

 

Female warriors’ outfits in video games are also silly. Enjoy.

 

And, finally, some sports fails to round out the hilarity.

Categories: Random | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Writing in the Bathroom

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

I’ve discovered the ultimate cure for writer’s block. And it’s the simplest thing in the world. Ready?

The Ultimate Cure for Writer’s Block

Keep a notebook and pen in your bathroom.

The Writer’s Block

I’ve been working on the sequel to Imminent Danger for awhile now, and it’s been going … not so well. My problem is that, according to my beta reader, there isn’t enough plot in the second half of the book. Fair enough. What I essentially have right now is tons of plot up to the middle of the story, tons of plot at the end … but for the second half, the characters mostly just traipse around and do irrelevant stuff.

So, obviously I need to change that. And I’ve been making extremely slow progress, but it’s been tough going because I just don’t have any inspiration for it, and I can’t bring myself to sit down and write if I don’t have inspiration. Thus, nothing gets done.

And then I brought a notebook into the bathroom.

The Solution

The first step is to get that notebook and pen into the bathroom. The second step is to take out everything else that could possibly interest you. That includes books, magazines, sudoku puzzles, tablets, etc.

This means that, when you sit down for your daily … let’s call it “relief”, you have absolutely nothing to occupy yourself with other than the notebook. And when a writer has nothing but a notebook and a pen, what else can we do but write?

It’s worked amazingly well. My characters are getting out and doing things, meeting cyborgs, dancing to the alien version of dubstep, etc. Will all of my scribbling make it into the final version of the book? Probably not. But at least I’m writing again! What else can a writer ask for?

Unrelated post of the day

I can’t remember which WordPress blogger directed me to this post, but it was really interesting, and I thought I’d share it here. It’s written by Cassandra Clare, a popular YA author, and she talks about dealing with hate blogs. I didn’t even know there were hate blogs. Clearly I live in a fairyland of butterflies and ice cream mountains. Anyway, here’s the link. 

Unrelated video of the day

For those of you who’ve never experienced the genius of College Humor, here’s a link. And here is one of my favourite comedy sketches/songs by them:

Categories: Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 34 Comments

Update on My Self-Publishing Adventure

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

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.

I wish I had enough money to do this …
Source: http://gerbeny.blogspot.ca/2012/03/irish-roman-bathhouse-sorry-no-nude.html

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!

Adorable image of the day:

Categories: iUniverse, Self Publishing, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 31 Comments

Dealing with my Nowhere Man

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

So I’ve recently encountered an issue in my writing, and that issue is how I should deal with what I affectionately call my Nowhere Man character. I briefly reference this issue in my latest blog post, in which we get halfway through editing a scene and then go, “Wait … isn’t Miguri supposed to be in this scene also? Where the heck did he go?”

By “Nowhere Man”, I mean a character who’s in the scene, but isn’t directly involved in it. So in the scene I referred to in my vlog, my problem is that I have two characters engaged in a dramatic fight to the death,while the protagonist looks on, offers encouragement, and ultimately gets involved in the fight herself.

But also in the scene is Miguri, my “Nowhere Man”, who contributes absolutely nothing to the fight because he’s three feet tall and couldn’t win a fight to save his life. In the original, unedited version of that scene, I solved the problem of “What to do with Miguri?” by just not mentioning him at all for about a chapter and a half. Obviously not the best solution to dealing with him.

We puzzled over that one for a while, and ended up noting that he “hid behind a metal block” for the duration of the fight. An elegant solution? No. But that’s the issue I’m trying to address in this post.

As a character, Miguri is awesome. He’s full of sage advice, makes lots of dry comments that crack me up, and is an excellent addition to most scenes. However, sometimes he just doesn’t contribute to the scene at all, but due to the flow of the plot, he has to be in the scene or else risk causing massive plot holes. In the fight scene I was talking about, he definitely can’t contribute anything — there’s a duel to the death going on, and no one has the time to be listening to his aforementioned sage advice and dry commentary. So what do I do with him?

My answer, clearly, is to make him hide behind a block. And that’s fair enough — he’s hidden behind various large objects in previous battle scenes, so there’s a precedent. But I can’t help feeling like that’s a cop-out. If a character is in a scene, I feel like they should contribute something. Does hiding count as contributing? I just don’t know. Maybe I should have knocked him out for the whole battle. That would have shown him! But again, a rather inelegant solution.

I suppose the best way to deal with a Nowhere Man is to have them do whatever their character would reasonably do in that situation. Even if that means hiding behind a block for three chapters. It isn’t terribly exciting, and readers are liable to forget the character’s even there — but then, isn’t that what hiding is supposed to do? Make you forget the hider is there? So in that case, I succeeded magnificently at making Miguri hide, because I totally forgot he was even in the scene! Huzzah!

Banana-themed link of the day:

Swords replaced with bananas.

((Description: A variety of images in which swords are replaced with bananas. Scroll down to the bottom for an excellent LOTR gif))

Related YouTube link of the day:

Categories: Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

VLOG #3 is now live!

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

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:

Random image of the day:

http://i.imgur.com/i2e5C.jpg

Categories: Self Publishing, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Chasing Nonconformity

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

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.

Categories: Self Publishing, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Working against my own interests …?

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

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!

Random graphic of the day:

D’awwwww! Source: http://i.imgur.com/Fex5Q.jpg

Categories: Self Publishing, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

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