Apologies to a Copy Editor

Well, here we are, a lot of novels in, and there are still certain usages I get wrong…

1.  Bare vs. bear.  Did you know that my copy editor bears up?  After x number of novels and novellas, she bears up even though I keep on writing that she bares up, but no, because here we bare all like bare flesh, but actually growly growly bears bear, and who’d have thunk it?  Not me.  Not after FOURTEEN YEARS of getting that one wrong….

2.  Line breaks.

I just

really

like line breaks?

And I grant you that, in terms of usage, they make no sense whatsoever but they’re just really

really

nice.

Sorry.

3.  Besides and beside.  I think this error may be down to the speed at which I talk.  (Which isn’t usually… um… slow.  Inaccurate yes, but not slow.)  At great speed, things which are beside become besides and things which should be besides become beside and well, yes, chaos ensues.  Also: principal, principle.  My Italian Mate hates this one too – she keeps on correcting my English whenever I get it wrong, and damnit, she’s just so right.

4.  Tenses.  I have written many a paragraph which began in the past tense.  However, the next line is now in present tense, and in present tense we remain, for no clearly apparent reason and yet when we blink, it was the past again and all common sense had departed.  And a lot of the time this is irritating.  And sometimes it’s for nice dramatic effect.  And in the recent bundle of novellas I’ve been editing it’s been for… reasons almost so convoluted that I struggle to explain it.  Which brings me to….

5.  My explanations for things, and here, really, I owe so much cake and grovelling to my long-suffering copy-editors for lo, a valid query is made in the side of a margin and my reply comes back:

‘Yeah, you’re right, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s just so… sorta… right, you know?’

Or worse:

‘I’m sorry, I disagree with that change, because the sentence is kinda blue, but the insertion of the word ‘bus’ makes it sorta sludgy green, and I don’t think it works.’

Or the ever classic:

‘Yeah, I know that grammatically speaking this is correct, but it’s a rhythmic thing, isn’t it?  It’s a ta-da-te-dum-ta-da thingy, rather than a boom-boom-bosh thingy, yeah?’

Oh my copy editor.  I’m so sorry.  It’s been so many years, and you’ve made so many books better with such apt queries as ‘but isn’t he asleep at this point?’ or ‘I thought you said she was dead’ and other useful statements to which the answer is an unequivocal ‘oh yes.  Whoops.  I totally cocked that up….’  And what has been your reward?  Ellipses flung in without explanation, colons erased, adjectives mis-applied, consistent spelling mistakes – and consistently the same spelling mistakes again, and again and again, and helpful feedback from me in the form of ‘yeah, but I just REALLY LIKE THIS BIT even though it makes no sense so can we leave it please?’

Dear My Wonderful Copy Editor: you make my books better.  I owe you cake.