I did hope for a ‘milestone’ post today, but am not quite there, so instead will share a “moment of eye-roll” from the revision front.

Doorstop, or revision manuscript?

Very often, revision involves big ticket decisions like “Does the narrative need this section at all, in order to ‘work’?” or “Is this part written in the right character’s point-of-view?” and “have I gotten all the action in the right, let alone the best (as per Coleridge’s observation on poetry) order.”

By ‘right’, of course, I mean an order that makes logical sense and will stand up to the test of the manuscript as a whole.

Knocking off those sections, one by one…

These big ticket items can be more hair-tearing exercises than eye-roll territory — with the latter, and a few grins, coming with the smaller stuff, like typos. Yesterday’s winner in the typo-and-reflexive-eyeroll-territory was “representating. Now what, I wondered, was I supping with my tea when I typed that?

Although it’s resolving the big ticket questions that matters in terms of getting the manuscript to D&A (recently discussed here), I do like to pick up such typos when I notice them, because despite the best efforts of myself and the team editorial, particularly copy- and proof- editors, they do have a habit of slipping through into the printed book.

Printed books – happy days!