Thursday 9 October 2008

Edits


This is a duck house, photographed at Jarrow acouple of years ago. Typical of Viking and early medieval dwellings to keep the birds safe overnight. The sort of duck house my heroine Emer would have known in the story FAR FROM GOLD.
Well, the edits for FAG are done and returned. It wasn't bad at all - only two points where a sentence needed to be removed and I didn't disagree with my editors decision. Apart from that, it was mainly removing commas and semi colons. That shows how long ago I wrote the story, for I rapidly grew out of using semi colons and hardly ever use them now. The incorrect commas, I fear, are partly a legacy of my critique goup and the computer grammar rules. At one point it seemed that where I put them in, critiquers took them out. Where I omitted them, critiquers put them in, and I became so confused they were spattered anywhere! The computer butted in whenever I used "and"... and as we all know, computers are totally inflexible.
Now I'm looking forward to a pre-release version of the book for reviewers in November.

This morning I must return some books to the library, buy some cottage cheese which I forgot yesterday during the grocery shop, and then settle down to some work on Heiress's Dilemma. Critiques to check, amendments to make before it goes off as a complete ms. Meanwhile dh goes on working in the kitchen. Tomorrow the new oven and fridge arrive and then, dear friends, it will be complete except for a total clean down and re-arrangement of storage. I'll have so many cupboards I won't know what to do with them all! I expect I'll walk to the wrong cupboard for weeks until I get then hang of where I've stored everything.

2 comments:

Linda Banche said...

Oh, I love ducks! and any information I can find on them. I'm glad I found your blog. I've bookmarked you.

Linda Banche said...

Ah yes, commas and semicolons. I first used semicolons, but then gave them, up, too. Maybe semicolons are a phase we all go through.

Congrats on your release.

More flames on the fire

  Occasionally I check for Book related news and  this morning caught a snippet that sent a shudder through me. It seems Omid Scobie, often ...