in the eating

[realthog]

Proofs (in the form of PDFs ready for me to print out and read) will be arriving tomorrow for Bogus Science.

This is always a nerve-racking time with a new book, I find, because it's really the first opportunity I get to look at the text objectively. In theory that opportunity came earlier, when I was polishing the text preparatory to delivering it to the publisher, but of course that was soon after I'd written it: it was all too easy to read not so much the words that were actually there in front of me but the thoughts I'd been intending to express when I set those words down. Now I'll be seeing everything cold, and it'll be revealed to me in a stark, icy light quite how ghastly it all is.

Whatever, since my first warning of the proofs' arrival came this afternoon, and since the corrections are wanted a bit quickish, there's a certain level of ungentlemanly panic going on at Snarl Towers right at the moment.

To add to the sense of rabbits staring into headlights, I've also said that, before the end of what was already looking to be a busy month, I'll write 1500 hellishly witty words -- or at least words filled with a witlike substitute -- about pal Ian Watson for a convention program book. Plus there's a huge ghosting/editing job to finish off, and stuff to get ready for BookExpo America in a fortnight's time. And, oh yes, a couple of anthology editors have very flatteringly asked if . . .

This might be about the right moment for y'all to express sympathies to Pam for everything she's going to have to put up with over the next few weeks. I'm sure she'd be touchingly grateful for this small gesture.

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's strait-jacket (or, better, strait-waistcoat).

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"That's strait-jacket (or, better, strait-waistcoat)."

Ere! Prissily editing people is *my* job, d'ye hear?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Prissy? What do you call somebody who is spending the day reading sentence fragments like this: 'But looking at the past, even all the way back to 1714 when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America even though the Native Americans where already settled in present day US'? 'Prissy' is not exactly the word I'd use.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"What do you call somebody who is spending the day reading sentence fragments like this"

Dan Brown's copyeditor.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Ka-zing. Now I know what Scots use for clubs: language.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Now I know what Scots use for clubs"

Empties.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Laughter helps heal the heart.

Thank you. :)

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I'm not half as well-paid, alas.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is your job. So don't spare me, even when I'm down in the dumps. I soak this stuff up.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Freaking English instructors . . . but thanks. I always get those two screwed up.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I am not a teacher of English. Fortunately.