and the beat goes on…

i received word last week from the alongquin chapel hill office that my copyedited manuscript was en-route. from the cryptic email, i grew terrified. would there be more changes? more line notes? more of: define “homegirl,” “flatleaver,” and all my brooklyn-ese middle school vernacular? i was waiting for the attacks on my use of the serial comma (and, by god, there were), my abuse of the em-dash (when in doubt, em-dash it, baby) and my need to make nouns verbs. applaud courageous editor, amy gash, for helping me realize that after a while this sort of language calls more attention to itself than the story! for a bit, our pens were like little swords and we were dueling over “gifted” and other such terms. in the end there was a compromise. i ditched many of my strange felicia-isms and i kept my very non-linear structure. because to me, time is not linear and i’m not sure i can ever write a very linear book.

SMITE YOU, Chicago Manual of Style, i shouted (imagine a little fist in the air), while i held the 239 page manuscript in my other hand.

in my hallway with a light that flickers white (vague recollections of the shuddering – yes! the door was quaking, shuddering, what have you – door scene in secret window come to mind), i tore through the DHL envelope much how i would furiously charge after a saran-wrapped lemon poppy pound cake, if i were still eating them, if i didn’t have to freak out about pending author photo shoot on the 20th, but i digress, to find my copyedited manuscript bound by a harem of rubber bands. i squinted and saw pencil etchings, margin notes and collapsed to my hallway floor amidst issues of Newsweek, The New Yorker and the ubiquitous LL Bean catalogue. i could hear little Sophie (or was it my neighbor’s cat, Scratch?) mewing upstairs.

mommy cannot deal with you right now, I shouted. mommy has less than a week to go over her copyedited manuscript. and did i mention i’m flying out to cleveland (with the chi) for the weekend to attend an art star wedding?!?!

in the warm light of my living room, whilst flicking back and forth from taped 90210 re-reruns (i have NO SHAME about this, people) and CNN, the edits were not so traumatizing. in fact, they were quite helpful. and after the first chapter, the edits are few and far between (snaps again to the rock star, gash). although, i will confess, the copyeditor’s language is quite foreign to me with it’s litany of abbreviations, squiggly lines and what not. mind you, i deal with copyedited work all the time, however, it’s in the kind form of microsoft track changes, where i’m spared the need to consult a chart for translation. so i consult the enclosed 4-page chart and look back at my manuscript, and, for some of my manuscript markings, that proverbial lightbulb refuses to flicker. for a moment, this felt like russia all over again – me not understanding cyrillic, even after consulting various EASY TO SPEAK RUSSIAN guides (note: it is not easy to speak russian, you cruel publishers of russian-language books) – and i placed the manuscript aside and focused on the more pressing matter at hand – polenta.

i will return to the manuscript, clear-headed, whilst on the flight to ohio.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 at 9:55 am and is filed under the writing life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.