Blog

Another big step in our journey behind us

Posted January 26th, 2012 by

While I worked away in my office last evening, Lindi watched the two women’s semi-final matches in the Australian Open tennis tournament. These two seemingly unrelated activities have quite the fascinating connection… at least to me.

My work was finishing up the review Sharon and I have been doing of our copy edited manuscript for Gather at the Table. We received it from the managing editor at Beacon Press last Friday. We’ve spent approximately three hours each day on the phone since then, working our way through the manuscript page by page, discussing whether to accept, reject, or modify each word, sentence, or paragraph our copy editor has recommended that we change. Almost every page has at least one recommended change; some have several.

The role of a copy editor is to correct errors in grammar, spelling, word or phrase usage, and style guidelines established by the publisher. She or he is charged with improving the flow of a story, to tighten things up and eliminate awkward phrasing.  We LOVE our copy editor! We’re proud of what we’ve written, and her work has made our book better.

You’d think it would be tedious to review a copy edited manuscript, but it isn’t. We continue to enjoy every aspect of the publishing process. This morning we sent the manuscript back to the managing editor. This part of the process has all been done online. According to our publishing schedule, sometime in late March we’ll receive a physical copy of the page proofs, which we will then proofread and mark corrections in red pencil; our final review before the book is prepared for printing.

So what does this have to do with my wife watching the Australian Open? Exactly one year ago at this time, Sharon and Lindi and I were in Tobago. Sharon and I wrote the first three chapters of Gather at the Table during our two week sojourn there. Our host for the trip, the owner of the house in which we stayed (Sharon’s daughter-in-law’s father) is an avid tennis fan just like Lindi. I’m not sure we’ll ever watch the Australian Open again without thinking about the wonderful – and warm – adventure we had in Tobago with Sharon. With all the snow and ice and freezing wind at our home in Oregon these days, I wish we were back in the Caribbean!

Our adventure continues, as does the countdown to publication in October.

One response to “Another big step in our journey behind us”

  1. Can't wait for your publication!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge