What Hank's Writing: It's Copy Edit Time!

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: First: Breaking news!

So what we're writing? Well, first, ten million thank you notes--at least--to the universe at large! THE MURDER LIST is nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary novel!  AND--drumroll: for the Mary Higgins Clark Award! I am overwhelmed, and my feet have not yet touched the ground. And--super bonus-- our dear Rhys LOVE AND DEATH IN THE TIME OF CHEETAHS is also an Agatha nominee--for best Historical.  SO fabulous! And we are both thrilled and incredibly grateful.

(The Agathas will be awarded at the Malice Domestic convention in May--where Red Julia is Guest of honor. Need I say: world domination? )

What I'm actually writing? Well, first, hurray. On Monday I finished (and sent in, with five whole minutes to spare before the deadline!)  the copy-edited version of my new book!

Copy edits. Can we talk? I actually adore doing them--it's the time where I can carefully carefully carefully look at every single word and every single sentence and paragraph, AND the book’s big picture,  and see how I can make the book better, clearer, more special. It's like a treasure hunt. But it is quite the journey.

The manuscript arrived, with all the copyeditor's changes and thoughts. It's a little intimidating to see all the corrections and questions. So, to make it easier to handle, first I go through and search for all my pet words. "Of course," and "actually" and "even" and "just"--I go through and ask myself: why did I use that word? What did I mean to say? How can I say that better? And that's a wonderful way to reacquaint myself  with the book. 

I look for qualifiers--Nancy Pickard taught me this--kind of, sort of, almost, maybe, could be, possibly. I try to take them all out.  Sentences are so much stronger without them.

I can confess I had used "of course" 41 times. Isn't that crazy? And I took out every use of "very"--at least when it was used to increase the value of the word it modified. Very angry, very upset, very  nervous. Delete, delete, delete. I can do better than that.

Then, another trick, I search for the word "like."  That lets me discover whether  I have fallen in love with any similes. Yes, indeed, I had. There were several mother/daughter and teacher/student comparisons.   Nope, all gone.

Then I search for semi-colons. Yup, I am not a fan, and the copy editor always rearranges my sentences to put them in. I usually make the sentence into two.

I also search for the phrases I seem to have fallen in love with--things about what happens to people's knees--turning to jelly, or mush, or shaking or whatever knees do. No knees do anything any more. After my copy edits, people no longer shrug. Or grin. Or shrug and grin. Or PAUSE! Argh.  HOW did I write all that stuff?

Oh, and everyone grimaced! No one flinched or winced. Or, heaven forbid, did nothing. ALL grimaces. All gone.

And whoa. Every single thing was gray in this book. The sky, the furniture, the rugs, the walls. The cat, the car. People's faces, their sweatshirts, the clouds, the snow, the slush. Uniforms, hair, seagulls. Yeesh. Most of the grays have now been changed to other colors. 

Then, ta dah! THE BATTLE OF THE HYPHENS.  This is a battle royal. Let's vote, Reds. Co-conspirator, or coconspirator?  Thirtysomething or  thirty-something?  Midsentence or mid-sentence?  I am all about hyphens, especially if the un-hyphenated word doesn't look like a word.  And the compound words: back yard or backyard? Face up or faceup? (I really loathe faceup. That's just not even a word.) So we battle over that.

And here's a new one. To me, at least.  Do you know there's not supposed to be a comma before too? Like: I want one, too. The CE took out all the commas in sentences like that. It's now: I want one too. Can that be right? Grr. 

And apparently I cannot spell "through." It comes out "though" every time. And I take out all the exclamation marks.

In other copy edit news, Ashley the copyeditor  brilliantly found at least two career-ending errors. Maybe three. Well, possibly not career-ending, but at least hideously embarrassing. So I would battle over everything else happily, given how grateful I am about those discoveries.

Here's another page of the copy edits, just to give you a tiny glimpse of the book to come.

And may I say two more things? 

I am SO excited about this book! Crossing fingers you love it, too. (HA. See what I did there?)

And--SO HAPPY ABOUT THE AGATHA and MHC nomination. 

So, Reds and readers, how do you feel about hyphens?   And is there a comma before "too" when it's used to mean "also"?