Copyediting Has Begun

The first of many processes we will be going through to get these books out to readers has begun. Our book is officially in the hands of the copyeditors. All the copyeditors do is edit for basic formatting. They are the people who make sure your ellipses are standard, they prefer italics to underlines and thus change them throughout, they prefer to NOT capitalize references to God (we overruled them and any Him referencing God will indeed be capitalized), etc.

So funny, my mom and I had to go through 10 pages of their copyediting checklist to agree or disagree with what they deemed standard practice. This is not truly editing as they do not look at content and structure based issues. We've completed that process -- first with a professional editor that we paid and followed by family and finally friends with previous publication experience (and time, a very important factor!).

Next, we have to choose the stylistic formatting. We have to pick everything from font style and size to how far down the page the Chapter heading will be. Painstaking, but sadly I love it. In a perfect world, I would like to be a Creative Writing or Literature teacher some day. More and more every day I feel the pull to go back to school to get my Masters in one of these two things, so keep any eye out for upcoming news.

Now if only I could learn to parent a tempermental 10 year old that only wants things her way.