This week (yep, the final 7 days before I head into the insanity that is spring semester), I turned in the DOVE ARISING copyedit and my revised draft of Book 2. I'm so relieved. Letting-steam-out-of-my-ears relieved.
The copyedit was the easier job by far. Penguin sent me a Word document checked for consistency (ie. making sure someone's shirt was black all the way through a scene) and grammar ("you put a comma in this kind of sentence earlier, so I'm going to add a comma here"). It was a relief knowing that two industry ninjas have my back with regard to embarrassing little foibles.
Working on that was really a kind of break from the Book 2 revision. These edits were BIG. I deleted entire chapters, changed characters' roles around, did more worldbuilding, etc. My editor at Writers House can tell you that I'm minimalist to a fault. My first drafts are tiny little things, almost novella size, with plot and characterization but little description. Then we start ripping things out and building them differently, and the books fill themselves out. I like to work on little details when the larger structure's been put in place.
My contract with Penguin, a pretty typical one, is such that I need to turn in an "acceptable" draft of Book 2 less than a month (!) after Book 1's publication date. Which means -- yup -- authors writing series are usually working on two or more books at once. It's not always a bad thing; if, say, ideas for Book 2 come up during finer edits of Book 1, we can change Book 1 to set up for those ideas in the sequel.
In other news, I got jacket copy (blurb, author bio, summary: what's going to be printed on the -- er-- jacket). And cover art should be coming soon!
Any writers out there? What does your editing process usually look like? I'm still new to this whole gig; I'd love to hear your stories.
