End of Edits

Finally got to the end of edits on Friday afternoon and staggered away with a cracking headache that only a large glass of red could solve. Boy, it was hard work. I've heard of US editors who have strict rules about writing, but I haven't so far encountered one until now. I think what made the task more complicated was the fact that I didn't know the house style. If I had, I could have ensured that there were 2 spaces between sentences and no spaces at the end of a paragraph before the submission went in. I wouldn't have used exclamation marks since they prefer italics. ( ie there! becomes italics, ie there) In many cases this added very little to the sense or the story. Those simple changes led to an awful lot of balloons. If they had not been necessary, the task would have seemed less onerous.

So, I've given myself a couple of days off and today must take a deep breath and read through the complete thing to see if what I've done makes sense. The exercise has been a learning curve, and I'm glad I'm through the hard part. Like the Durham students in the pic, training is essential if you want to be good.