Nitpicking

Ah, Monday. It was kind of a cold, dreary weekend, but we had our first (very light) snow and my choir sang Vivaldi's "Gloria." It's supposed to warm up a bit this week, but then be rainy next weekend, which I am totally okay with. It looks like I might have a no plans, no obligations weekend on the horizon, which will be good for leading up to Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, I have work to do. On Friday, I got the "first pass" page edits from the proofreader. This isn't a phase I've had to go through before. Normally, I see the copyedits and get to go over them and accept or argue with the copyeditor and make any other changes. Then those changes are input and the manuscript is typeset. I get to see the typeset manuscript and notice any actual errors (because changing things at this point is bad). Meanwhile, there's also a professional proofreader going over the typeset book. Well, this time I get to see what the proofreader said. This one did catch a few things that I can't believe made it this far without anyone noticing (and a thousand blessings for doing so). But she (?) also was trying to play editor and even attempting some rewriting at this point, asking worldbuilding questions (mostly for stuff that doesn't even really matter and that isn't important to the story -- I do have answers for the questions, but those answers don't need to be in the book) or mentioning if the same word shows up more than once on a page (or in some cases, every 20 pages). So I'm going through the book and either accepting suggested changes or explaining why the change would be a bad idea. And apparently there will be another pass of proofreading after these changes are inserted, mostly to make sure that making the changes didn't mess up something else, which does happen.

And, you know, even after this many people going over the book with a fine-toothed comb, I can just about guarantee you that within days of the release of the book, I'll get an email from a reader pointing out a typo or punctuation error somewhere in the book (I will definitely get at least one email pointing out a perceived error that isn't actually wrong).

It's a good thing I love this book because I went through at least four drafts on my own, a couple of rounds with my agent, four rounds of revisions with my editor, copyedits, page proofs, and now proofreader questions before probably one more pass. Then I may never want to read it again, though I will still look at the cover and sigh blissfully.