Celebrating the Copyedits on My New Novel

One of the happiest moments of the writing process for me is when I get the copyedited versions of my novel. Some writers hate to go through their prose after it has been carefully examined and dissected by a copyeditor (or team of such), but nothing makes me happier and I whip out a small martini pitcher as soon as I’m done.

Copyeditors are God’s creatures and they painstakingly catch you in factual errors and give you great ideas about how a clumsy sentence can be reconfigured. This is especially helpful for me, as English is my second language and I don’t know speling and grammer good. (Like, WTF is a gerund?)

I usually spend a week going through the edits and this reminds me of what the book really is, because while you’re writing it it’s hard to see it globally, you’re going chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph. Here, you gotta read the whole thing in a week.

Now what’s the hardest part of copyediting for me?