Reading Lois' book The Hallowed Hunt

[pegkerr]

I'm feeling quite cross with myself. I don't know whether I've become sloppy since I haven't been critiquing many manuscripts lately, but I'm looking over this manuscript and thinking, "I don't have much to suggest in the way of changes." Which actually, Lois will probably be very happy to hear, esp. since she has to get it to the editor by the end of the month--which is putting more pressure on me to hurry--but it makes me feel that I've lost my critical eye, which makes me, as I said, fretful.

Crap, not only do I have doubts about myself as a writer, now I have doubts about myself as an editor/beta reader/critic. Which is screamingly funny, when you think about it, because it's my tendency to be overly critical about my own writing that's making it so difficult to write.

I wonder if part of the problem is that I'm reading it on the screen, rather than on the printed page. I haven't had much experience critiquing book manuscripts this way, but it's certainly cheaper for Lois to e-mail the book rather than take the trouble to print it out and the money to copy it. (And no, I'm not going to e-mail it out to all of you. Sorry.) I'm used to scribbling my comments on paper, not switching and forth between the ms. on screen and my typed comments in a separate file. Having the page to scribble on makes me look at the words differently, somehow.

Yeah, maybe. And maybe it's just that my critical mind is, you know, mush.

Grawaghf.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

From reading the copy editors' mailing list, I know that some people are more accurate and productive when they edit on screen, and some when they edit on paper. I don't think it's just a matter on getting used to the new method, because the two are very different experiences, and it makes sense that people would differ in their reactions. I took to on-screen editing the first time I tried it, and I am both faster and better at on-screen editing than hard-copy editing.