My copyedits came in yesterday. Along with a house style guide, a legend of obscure short-hand symbols, and a magical green pencil, all provided by my awesome editor, Danielle. It’s a tad intimidating, I’ll admit. In between my gilded words are copious amounts of colored notes – Danielle’s line edits in grey, the copy-editor’s in red, Danielle’s rebuttal to some of those red marks…in green. It’s almost like Christmas came and barfed all over my book. I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course. It can be hard to see your words and sentences shredded – but honestly, the editors aren’t changing my writing voice, so much as refining it and making it stronger. In the writing world, less really is more – and prose often needs snipping to keep it crisp and fresh. So now I’ve got two weeks to go through all these little changes and… Read more