Last week, I got an email from Madame Editrix, saying she had read the manuscript for FIXED (Gin & Tonic #2) and loved it. And that I should prepare for incoming notes.
(Because no book is so good that a good editor can’t show you how to make it better. That’s me saying that, not her. Although she totally would, too.)
In these Modern Times, usually an announcement like that would lead to checking my email for the above-referenced editorial letter. Hell, even when I was back at Penguin in the early 2000s, we were doing it that way, and all the editing work I do for d.y.m.k now is digital….
But Madame Editrix, she is Old School. She sends me a marked-up manuscript. Yes, actual paper (a printout of the file I’d sent her). With an actual pencil.
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It’s…kind of adorable. And weirdly reassuring. A reminder that for all that’s changed in this industry, all the long-term and overnight disruptions, it really does still come down to this: words. On a page. Marked up and moved around, until they’re perfect.
And, if I’m very good, little smiley faces in the margins, where I made her laugh.
So today I will be taking my printout and walking away from the computer screen for a while, to read her comments and see what she’s scrawled, and think about murder, mayhem and misdirection in a calm, off-screen manner.
(there will still be caffeine, of course. Caffeine is a constant, no matter what tech you use)
I confess, I’m still not quite sure i feel like a mystery writer. Maybe that’s because it’s Ms. Kornetsky, not me? Or maybe it will take two or three books to settle into that skin. But this, the editing and being edited side? It always feels right.
Oh, and for those of you who’ve somehow missed out on COLLARED, the first book in the series? Click Here.