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| Can you see the pretty windswept look??? |
As many of you know, a galley, or ARC (Advance Reading Copy), is a special, pre-publication print run of the ms, which looks a lot like a paperback. It is used to market the book before it arrives in stores.
The galley pass is the unbound version of the galley. Where you see your words typeset in a book-like way for the very first time. In most cases, much squeeing ensues.
Personally, I did squee. With happy incoherent ooohing and aaaahing noises when I realized that someone in Design had taken the time to make the chapter titles all windswept and cool-looking.
The purpose of the galley pass is to make sure nothing is hugely wrong with it before the galleys are printed. My editor sent this one my way as a courtesy.
I even set up a workstation in the dining room (as opposed to a quiet, undisturbed corner somewhere less public), just so that I could show off the pretty chapter openings to uncles, aunts, grandmas, friends, and even unsuspecting strangers who came to tour the new house.
Confession: I have meant to squee in a public way for a while. Quite a while. Well over a month, in fact.
In the above pic, you might even be able to make out a date on the letter from my editor's lovely assistant Katie: February 16.
It's not quite that bad. I mean, it didn't arrive till the 21st, when I was visiting friends and editors in New York. So I couldn't actually work on it until after I returned on the 24th.
2nd Confession: I didn't work on it right away. I procrastinated a few days. I circled the galley pass without touching it, too skittish to commit to re-reading it.
I had the perfect excuse: I was sick, and fever is not conducive to concentration.
I was also scared.
I don't think I've disguised the fact that my editor and I struggled to revise this manuscript last year. Between March and October, we worked through five separate drafts of Always Neverland. All but one of those was a fairly thorough reworking of what had come before. I lost my way somewhere between July and August. I couldn't recall what kind of story I was telling, or who my main character was. We had to add a couple more revisions to help me find the story again.
Bless my editor for her patience with me. I can't be the only debut novelist she has worked with who struggled this way, but I had to be one of the more difficult cases. She is truly wonderful, and her vision didn't falter - even when mine did.
By the time September rolled around, and my editor surprised me by saying that the ms was ready for copy-editing, I didn't question her and rejoiced for days.
Fastforward to November: The copyedits arrived around Thanksgiving, and they required a quick turn-around. So, I didn't actually reread the ms then. I just answered the queries and sent them back to New York.
Fastforward to February: Suddenly, I had an official-looking version of my ms. And I hadn't read it in five months. I had worked on so many different versions of the story that I didn't remember exactly what happened.
So, I was terrified. Scared that it would be terrible and that it would be too late to fix it.
Then, one day, I told myself to be a grown-up. Ahem, I mean, a responsible author person. Biting my nails, I sat down in front of it, unclamped the huge binder clip, and started to read.
It wasn't bad.
It was even kind of good....
But it could be better.
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| This is page 1. I made a lot of changes to page 1. |
I took a pencil and started marking changes. I was so thorough that working through it took couple weeks. I was so indecisive that I wore down the eraser to a flat, unhelpful gray circle and had to get another pencil.
Then I finished. And it sat on my dining room for a couple weeks - almost like it was a centerpiece, or some other form of decoration - where I showed it off to the aforementioned unsuspecting guests. Procrastination reigned again.
I told myself the reason was that I needed to find someplace to make a copy of it without getting charged a million dollars (have you seen the size of those pages?). But really, I was nervous, because I had made a lot of changes. Probably more changes than I was supposed to.
Suddenly, I had a new worry: that my editor and her assistant were going to be upset with me. I was creating a huge amount of extra work for them. Extra work on an ms which had already cost them many man hours.
For days, I wondered if I should erase some of the changes. But I couldn't find any that didn't seem necessary.
Then I had a realization. Yes, I was creating some extra work. For myself as well as others. But once it was in print, I wouldn't be able to make any changes anymore, and it would stand forever as my very first novel. Why wouldn't I make it the very best book it could be?
So, I made a copy. Sent the galley pass back. And bit my nails a lot.
By now, you're probably wondering if I have a point to this story. Bear with me. I'm close.
I didn't expect to hear back, but a couple weeks later, my editor emailed me. I opened it with duty and trepidation, but I had a pleasant surprise:
She was just taking the time to tell me how much I've grown as an author "even over this short time." And she also thanked me for going that extra mile.
(She didn't have to do that. Didn't I tell you that my editor is wonderful?)
It totally made my day. Actually, my whole week.
It made me feel like every single revision and every single pass and every single hour was worth the trouble.
And it just goes to show: Until the book is a book, you can always polish it a little more. And sometimes, being a perfectionist isn't such a bad thing. :-)
(Of course, I must mention that soon after, my editor's lovely assistant Katie emailed me the queries from the proofreading pass, and she also added that this was the last time I would see it before it was a real book.
Eeeeeek! More nail-biting has ensued.)
