Back to editing (what fun!)

So. The proof is here. (Not in the pudding.)

I got the book on Tuesday, gave it to my mom to read on Wednesday, and got it back from her on Saturday (along with her ideas for a sequel! Well, that's good, she liked the characters enough to want to read more about them!)

Now it's time for the serious stuff. Me, the book, and a pencil.

I'm reading it backwards. I'm reading it aloud. I'm reading it aloud backwards. Thank goodness the cat doesn't mind. I'm going as slowly as I can, but it's really hard not to speed up. I'm doing no more than six pages at a time. And I'm finding errors.

Frankly, I am appalled at how many errors I have already found. I have only gone through the first eleven pages of the book, and here's the tally:

     Nine sentences that need rewriting;
     Eight punctuation errors;
     Two capitalization errors;
     and a partridge in a pear tree (not).

Oh, well, at least I'm catching them now, though I feel sure I'm not going to find them all. I plan to have a couple of other people read the proof, too, so that should help. And I'm telling myself that there are more errors in the first chapter because that's the one that's been rewritten so much recently.

My posting schedule will be erratic over the next two weeks (I'm on vacation). But you can pretty much picture me going through the book, pencil in hand, as in the photo above. It'll take a couple of weeks to get through it, I'm sure.