[HPforGrownups] How errors creep in (LONG) (was Re: Wand Order Issue)

[Peg Kerr]

No: HPFGUIDX 5582


Scott wrote:

> Just wanted to say that I am in no way trying  to imply that you're
> not telling the truth Penny, it's just that I find that hard to
> believe.
> I would like to see this from JKR if it was indeed meant to be
> corrected.  What I mean is that the whole chapter is undermined if it
> says that "Harry knew it was his mother b/c she was the one he had
> thought of more than any other that night."  He DID NOT think of his
> mother that night, he thought of his father, and the story doesn't
> make sense anyother way, in my not so humble opinon.
> Lastly I agree with the person who said that this type of mistake can
> undermine the credibility of an author.
>

Okay, I think I should chime in here as possibly one of the only people on
this list who has ever seen a book shepherded from manuscript to print (am I
right?)

You have to realize it's not just the author, and it's not just a monolithic
publisher.  It's the author, and the author's word processing software, and
the editor and the copy editor, and the book designer and the typesetter,
and the software they use for spellchecking, and the software program they
used to translate it to because they don't have the same word processing
software that the author uses . . .

Jo works differently than I do, I understand: she writes her first draft
longhand.  I type directly on my computer and do rolling revision, meaning,
I just keep reworking and reworking a scene, writing directly over what has
been written before.  I keep a dump file for each chapter, and if I cut
something big, I put it there, so if I need to reconstruct something or I
change my mind and decide I will use a bit later, I can find it.

When you change your mind on a big plot thingummy, you have to make a mental
note about all the other things in the plot this affects and remember to
change them, too.  Say you decide to change what character X is wearing, not
only do you have to change it in the scene, but you have to go back to the
earlier scene where you described the character getting dressed and fix
that, too. And you can miss them.  Sometimes you just throw something in,
and you forget all about it and write two hundred and fifty more pages and
then decide, "I'll make Lady Isabella's eyes blue"--forgetting that you
declared them to be a ravishing emerald green when you wrote that earlier
scene six months ago.

Then, let's say, like Jo, you miss your deadline. Suddenly, you're short on
sleep. And when you re-read the damn thing, the words dance on the paper in
front of your eyes because you've read it fifty times before, and what
you've written and what you've erased and what you intended to write and
what you've forgotten about and what you still intend to fix but haven't
gotten around to fixing jumble about in your head, and so you miss things.

You send the Ms off to the publisher, and then you wait and chew your
nails.  Finally, the editor sends you back the revision requests.  You take
forty-eight hours for your blood pressure to subside, and then you read her
letter again, decide she's four-fifths right, and why didn't you ever see
that, but you will NOT give on the last one-fifth, and so you call your
editor and have a phone conference and finally hammer out that you'll change
three keys scenes, but that means you'll have to write a new chapter two,
and while you're at it, you can clear up those discrepancies about your
hero's family history and change the younger brother's girlfriend to the
reporter's cousin.

You send the manuscript back to the publisher, both hard copy and on disk,
and she finally gets back to you and says she's accepting it.  Huzzah!  You
open some champagne and celebrate.  [You should realize, of course, that the
final check you've been expecting won't show up for six months, because of
that contract change you signed eight months ago that your agent sent you,
changing your payment schedule from 1/3 upon outline; 1/3 upon final draft;
1/3 upon publication to 1/3 upon signing, 1/3 upon first draft; 1/3 upon
final draft but no one forwarded the changed contract to the accounting
department, so when you call and ask your editor "where's my check?" she
sends a note to accounting saying, "Pay her what we still owe her," and the
accounting department looks up the old contract and say, "We've already paid
her everything we owe her," not realizing that they haven't, and this isn't
figured out till five months later.  But I digress.]

Anyway, eventually, the copy editor sends the manuscript back, marked up for
the typesetter, with a whole list of queries, and they want you to look the
whole six hundred pages of manuscript over with a fine tooth comb, and they
need it back in New York in three days.  You pay the express shipping
charges, of course.  I personally read both copyedit manuscript and typeset
galleys BACKWORDS -- word by word.  That way the meaning of what you are
reading doesn't trip you up, and you see things with a new eye.  And you
realize -- hey, do I want to say door frame or doorframe?  If I make it two
words, what should I do about windowsill?  Should that be two words, too?
Should I say "was" or "were" here?  Is that the subjunctive mood?  You pull
out your grammar handbooks.  You pull out your editing handbooks.  You read
the copyeditor's queries and realize "Good god, that's enormous plot hole! I
never thought of that!  What should I do about it?"  You tear your hair
out.  You call the editor and say, another week, please?  "No way," your
editor says.  "You've got the March slot, and if we let it slip . . ." she
lets the threat hang in the air.  You hang up the phone, cravenly giving in,
and make another pot of coffee and curse.

Finally, you finish and send the copyedit off and just when you think you're
free again, you get the printed galleys back (the book as typeset) and
you're told to go through it again.  And it has to be back to the publisher
in three days to a week.  Omigod--did you get that copyright permission
lined up for that epigram you used as a chapter opener?  The type is so
close together.  How can you read it?  You're going blind.  You read it
backwards.  Again.  If you hurry, will you have enough time to go through it
twice?  Those spaces after the periods--is that the right amount of space,
or is a space missing, and how can you tell if you've never seen this
typeset font before?  Why is that word spelled that way?  You know you
didn't spell it that way.  It's not spelled that way on your manuscript, and
the copyeditor made no changes to it.  And you gave the editor the book on
disk, so there's no excuse for this!  Weren't they going to set the book
directly from your disk?  You call your editor, who explains that they run a
spellchecker which routinely changes words without asking for anyone's
permission.  But you didn't spell anything wrong.  The spellchecker took
your perfectly spelled word and turned it into a different perfectly spelled
word that makes no sense in the context of the sentence.  It did that same
change everywhere throughout the book.  Are you sure you caught all of them?

You have your style handbook, your grammar reference guide, your dictionary,
your thesaurus (did you really use the word "ringing" THREE times in that
one paragraph?) your two volume Oxford English Dictionary with the
magnifying glass to help you read the itty bitty type, lots of pencils and
erasers, your guide to typesetter's marks, your fat volume of character
notes, the previous draft of the book, your previous book to check for
continuity errors, your xerox of the marked up copyedited version (you DID
keep a xerox, didn't you?), the typesetter's notes, your answers to
copyeditor's queries (you did keep a copy of those, didn't you?  Did the
typesetter catch them all?), the editor's original revision letter, and your
own notes for last minute revision all within arm's reach.  Don't forget you
can't make too many changes to the typeset version.  That gets expensive!
You curse and cry some more.  If anyone talks to you, you snarl at them.
Your spouse shoves sandwiches in through the office door and continually
stokes the coffeepot, and your children avoid you.

I may be exaggerating a little, but not by much.

I have a friend whose book schedule went all awry, necessitating rushing the
book into print with many errors because it hadn't been properly copyedited
because the copyeditor who had her manuscript had a psychotic break and they
found him wandering around talking to himself in Central Park, and by the
time they got her manuscript retrieved from his apartment it was too late to
do anything but a rush job (she sometimes jokes that she wonders whether it
was her book that pushed him over the edge).  I have had friends who had
their books put in print, in error, from the PREVIOUS version of the book.

I've mentioned before that I lost a whole moon in my first novel.  I saw the
cover and groused about how I hadn't put a moon in my world, damnit--and
then re-read the first chapter, which I'd read a million times, and there
dagnabit was the moon I'd put in that I'd forgotten all about.

And I didn't have several million people waiting with bated breath for my
next book, and I didn't have an editor who KNEW I had those million people
waiting for my next book.

So . . . yeah, I can understand how errors can get introduced.  Believe me,
I do.

Peg Kerr

Shameless plug:
Author of _Emerald House Rising) and _The Wild Swans_ (both published by
Warner Books)

Website: http://www.tc.umn.edu/nlhome/m391/d-lena/PegKerrBibliog.html