Waiting & Preparing

In an email to me from my wonderful editor, Barbara Scott, she suggested that if I do not have the Chicago Manual of Style, it would be a good investment, since most book publishers use CMS. I bought it from Amazon and I highly recommend that ever writer have this book in their library. It has a fantastic information on writing, examples of edits, what macro and substantive editing is. Oh, by the way. In my last blog entry I called it 'micro' edit. My mistake.

The second editing phase is the substantive. Chicago Manual of Style describes it thus:

“This second editorial process may be called substantive editing—rewriting, reorganizing, or suggesting other ways to present material. The editor will know by instinct and learn from experience how much of this kind of editing to do on a particular manuscript. An experienced editor will recognize, and not tamper with, unusual figures of speech and idiomatic usage and will know when to make an editorial change or simply to suggest it, when to delete a repetition or simply to point it out to the author, and many other matters. Since every manuscript is unique in the amount and kind of substantive editing desirable, no rules can be devised for the editor to follow.”

Barbara is currently at the ACFW conference in Minneapolis. I wasn't able to attend. I'm at home working on another novel, and preparing myself for the macro edit to arrive most likely on a day and time I will least expect it. It's very exciting. If you've never seen a macro edit, or a red-lined manuscript, do a image search on Google. I found an example on Don McNair's website. I don't know anything about him, so I can't recommend him as an editor. However, this is the best example of a red-lined manuscript I could find online. www.mcnairedits.com/EditingSample.html

Until next time....