I have done some freelance and small-press copyediting and am torn between vague mortification that a style guide for an individual work is a new idea to me and COMPLETE DELIGHTED FASCINATION, so I'm going to lean into the latter. That is so cool! That is so practical! That must really save problems like having 'hangar' turned into 'hanger' or a random (& inconsistent) 50% of occurrences of Greek proper nouns being turned into their Latin variants in a novel from a Ptolemaic perspective! (Both of which various other copyeditors (the latter at a big 4 publisher) did to an old friend of mine's novels over the years, which is how I wound up doing copyediting in the first place.)
I have been thinking an awful lot over the last 8 months about the head as a resonator -- I suffered auditory trauma late last year and it taught me that my skull (or the injured part of my eardrum) has a resonant frequency and that's An Experience (while fascinating, extremely not one I recommend) and also my own laugh hits it (😬). I've also, over the past year, been playing with the idea of trying to learn to sing, which has a lot of grappling with the disconnect between what I think I sound like and what I actually do. (Yikes.)
And I've started writing again after a very long gap. One of the things I did in that process was go plumbing the depths of old snippets of writing and, like, long-abandoned fanfic and such to see if I had anything I wanted to revisit or recycle or if anything inspired me. It turns out that looking back at old work, some of it from 10 or 15 years ago & much of which I'd forgotten, gave me the very odd experience of seeing some of my writing from outside of my head. It was a peculiar experience! And of course who knows if I can write the same way these days or if the voice of past-me is lost to the ages and this is the literary equivalent of looking back at old photos of oneself and going "Gosh I was so much better-looking than I realized then" that only happens when one no longer looks the same.
Perspective is both odd and rude, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Good luck with the copyedits. That is a whole experience. May it be (or have been, by now?) as smooth for you as possible!
Ack, I had a whole reply written to this and then Safari quit unexpectedly. *shakes fist at tech gods* Tech glitches: the new person from Porlock? Anyway, let me see if I can reconstruct.
Copyedits: almost done. Eager to get there. This book might be the best thing I've ever written--I hope it is--but its roots also go deep into some uncomfortable corners of my mind. It's hard to live there as deeply as I have to, to do the work justice.
Writing, and old-photo hotness: what I try to tell myself is, well, if I didn't know how good I looked then, perhaps I don't know how good I look *now*! Which applies to writing, too, in a way. If you can't recapture a particular sense of youthful brio, you're bringing a lot more to the table in terms of experience with language, with people, with telling stories of all sorts. I know a surprising number of people who took a long hiatus, then came back and started winning awards.
Sorry to hear about your injuries! And yikes, getting resonated by your own laugh. That's a hell of an image.
Given that you've been listening to dungeon synth on the more... metal end of things (my area of love, basically), I feel like I've got to inform you of two bands:
•Noctule, who are Skyrim themed black metal, and very much adhere to theme (they have a track called Deathbell Harvest! And one called Labyrinthian!)
•Cara Neir, who play what can only be described as 80s 8-bit video game soundtrack meets heavy metal. And somehow make it work really well.
Thanks for the recommendations! I'll give them a shot. 80s 8-bit meets metal is an especially good vibe for my writing these days. Do you know about The Black Mages? Uematsu's instrumental rock Final Fantasy soundtrack cover band?
Glad to hear you're doing well, great post as always :) I remember the one style guide I've ever worked with, and how much fun it was. Thinking of it as a process sort of orthogonal to the writing process, a different perspective on the same set of words and characters has definitely helped me avoid tensing up too much; on the other hand, I often have to remind myself that *some* things are absolutely worth pushing back on during editing. This is especially if you're using words outside of English in your text, where cultural authenticity may be more important than accessibility to an English-speaking audience. Not always, of course.
I am doing well, trying to beat the heat! Good luck with the edits!
My first thought is often "stet"; I've trained myself to stop and ask, does the CE have a point? But writers with different personalities, or who feel like they're on shakier ground with their publishers (whether or not that's true) might instead ask "can I afford to push back here"? Important in all cases to remember that it's ultimately your name on the book--you're the one bearing most of the risk & you're the one who's going to be called to stand beside the text. Which is its own kind of terrifying!
I have done some freelance and small-press copyediting and am torn between vague mortification that a style guide for an individual work is a new idea to me and COMPLETE DELIGHTED FASCINATION, so I'm going to lean into the latter. That is so cool! That is so practical! That must really save problems like having 'hangar' turned into 'hanger' or a random (& inconsistent) 50% of occurrences of Greek proper nouns being turned into their Latin variants in a novel from a Ptolemaic perspective! (Both of which various other copyeditors (the latter at a big 4 publisher) did to an old friend of mine's novels over the years, which is how I wound up doing copyediting in the first place.)
I have been thinking an awful lot over the last 8 months about the head as a resonator -- I suffered auditory trauma late last year and it taught me that my skull (or the injured part of my eardrum) has a resonant frequency and that's An Experience (while fascinating, extremely not one I recommend) and also my own laugh hits it (😬). I've also, over the past year, been playing with the idea of trying to learn to sing, which has a lot of grappling with the disconnect between what I think I sound like and what I actually do. (Yikes.)
And I've started writing again after a very long gap. One of the things I did in that process was go plumbing the depths of old snippets of writing and, like, long-abandoned fanfic and such to see if I had anything I wanted to revisit or recycle or if anything inspired me. It turns out that looking back at old work, some of it from 10 or 15 years ago & much of which I'd forgotten, gave me the very odd experience of seeing some of my writing from outside of my head. It was a peculiar experience! And of course who knows if I can write the same way these days or if the voice of past-me is lost to the ages and this is the literary equivalent of looking back at old photos of oneself and going "Gosh I was so much better-looking than I realized then" that only happens when one no longer looks the same.
Perspective is both odd and rude, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Good luck with the copyedits. That is a whole experience. May it be (or have been, by now?) as smooth for you as possible!
Ack, I had a whole reply written to this and then Safari quit unexpectedly. *shakes fist at tech gods* Tech glitches: the new person from Porlock? Anyway, let me see if I can reconstruct.
Copyedits: almost done. Eager to get there. This book might be the best thing I've ever written--I hope it is--but its roots also go deep into some uncomfortable corners of my mind. It's hard to live there as deeply as I have to, to do the work justice.
Writing, and old-photo hotness: what I try to tell myself is, well, if I didn't know how good I looked then, perhaps I don't know how good I look *now*! Which applies to writing, too, in a way. If you can't recapture a particular sense of youthful brio, you're bringing a lot more to the table in terms of experience with language, with people, with telling stories of all sorts. I know a surprising number of people who took a long hiatus, then came back and started winning awards.
Sorry to hear about your injuries! And yikes, getting resonated by your own laugh. That's a hell of an image.
Happy writing!
Given that you've been listening to dungeon synth on the more... metal end of things (my area of love, basically), I feel like I've got to inform you of two bands:
•Noctule, who are Skyrim themed black metal, and very much adhere to theme (they have a track called Deathbell Harvest! And one called Labyrinthian!)
•Cara Neir, who play what can only be described as 80s 8-bit video game soundtrack meets heavy metal. And somehow make it work really well.
Deathbell Harvest! omg
Thanks for the recommendations! I'll give them a shot. 80s 8-bit meets metal is an especially good vibe for my writing these days. Do you know about The Black Mages? Uematsu's instrumental rock Final Fantasy soundtrack cover band?
I did not but I am *honestly thrilled* to learn of them! Thank you!
Glad to hear you're doing well, great post as always :) I remember the one style guide I've ever worked with, and how much fun it was. Thinking of it as a process sort of orthogonal to the writing process, a different perspective on the same set of words and characters has definitely helped me avoid tensing up too much; on the other hand, I often have to remind myself that *some* things are absolutely worth pushing back on during editing. This is especially if you're using words outside of English in your text, where cultural authenticity may be more important than accessibility to an English-speaking audience. Not always, of course.
I am doing well, trying to beat the heat! Good luck with the edits!
My first thought is often "stet"; I've trained myself to stop and ask, does the CE have a point? But writers with different personalities, or who feel like they're on shakier ground with their publishers (whether or not that's true) might instead ask "can I afford to push back here"? Important in all cases to remember that it's ultimately your name on the book--you're the one bearing most of the risk & you're the one who's going to be called to stand beside the text. Which is its own kind of terrifying!