This weekend, by the power of coffee, the page proofs were sent back to Random House all squiggled up with little blue pen-marks. The changes I made were extensive enough that I'm now a bit nervous about the fact that anyone is going to see the bound proofs, which consist of the pre-final edit text. Which means I should either learn to lighten up a little or push myself to be more ruthless with the things that I know I need to change but don't have the will to change yet when it comes to the earlier revisions. The final edit mostly consisted of metaphorically bouncing every word against the table to hear whether it rang true, and messing with the ones that thudded, so I'm less of a basket case than I was on the day I finished the structural revision and realised that I was essentially done writing the novel.
And while I've been tweaking the insides, other people have been tweaking the outsides:
There should be a little box of bound proofs turning up on my doorstep any day now...
And now that that's mostly done and dusted, there's nothing keeping me from locking myself in my flat in Norwich and writing up my critical thesis.
metphorically bouncing, that is a great description. congratulations and good luck with the thesis writing!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Looks like I'll need it.
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