sleigh: (Default)
([personal profile] sleigh Dec. 7th, 2008 10:38 am)
Another installment in the exciting life of a writer.

The latest delay on working on A MAGIC OF DAWN is having to read the typeset galleys of A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL, which arrived on 11/25 and had to be back to DAW by 12/5 to be sent off to production -- a tight schedule, but I managed it. Having now read the book at least a dozen times now, it seems, I must say that I still think it reads well. However, I'm also certain that I'm nearly the world's worst proofreader for the book, since I'll happily supply a missing word. I know what's supposed to be there. Several times I caught myself skimming rather than really reading.

Still, I caught several errors, including one minor plot glitch which I managed to fix without too much modification of the text. I'd bet that Marsha Jones, who's doing the proofing at DAW, caught far more errors than me, however: she's a good, close reader, and the book's 'newer' to her.

And I've gone back now (finally, and again) to A MAGIC OF DAWN. Happily, I just passed the 30,000 words mark this morning; unhappily, that means I still have well over 100,000 words to go, since I suspect the draft will come in between 160,000 and 175,000 words.

I need to really press on DAWN -- I should be farther along by now, but other projects (mostly, writing a story for WILD CARDS that was novella length) have interfered...

*sigh* Can't change that, though (and wouldn't want to). Onward!

From: [identity profile] tcastleb.livejournal.com


oh, hey, I just finished reading TWILIGHT and enjoyed it very much. You do have a penchant for writing disturbed children, don't you? Though I did like all your characters; Sergei is cool. I'm looking forward to seeing more of him.

From: (Anonymous)

I'm nearly the world's worst proofreader for the book


Though I've not tried it myself, some folks I know have good luck using text-to-speech software to listen to material they need to proofread. (Much easier if you get it in electronic format, but you could OCR and then run it through the software if you only get hard-copy.)

They've reported that they hear a missing word much more readily and typos (think "torn"/"tom") are obvious. Scanning the hard-copy at the pace of the audible text forces them to slow down and not skim. The traps of proofreading when you're already familiar with the material are harder to fall into when employing a new sense (new part of the brain?) for the task.

-P


From: [identity profile] sleigh.livejournal.com

Re: I'm nearly the world's worst proofreader for the book


I wonder how well the software would handle spec-fic, however, where there are tons of strange, unfamiliar, and made-up terms...
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