This is your pick me up, in case you are struggling with writing or something else today.
Number of times Gordon and I looked at the manuscript: 6.
Number of professional editors who also looked at it: 4.
Number of beta readers who looked at it: 6.
Around them the forest breathed. Swarms of purple fireflies meandered through the air, beautiful spots of light against the indigo and navy of the woods. It was beautiful in the way only the wilderness untouched by humans could be.
…
Around them the forest breathed. Swarms of purple fireflies meandered through the air, beautiful mesmerizing spots of light against the indigo and navy of the woods. It was beautiful in the way only the wilderness untouched by humans could be.
There. Fixed.
Onward and upward.
Thanks, I needed a pick me up. Twin 1: sick. Twin 2: sick. Hours of uninterrupted sleep: Let’s not go there…Hours ogmf work tomorrow with no sleep: too many…
And you thought sleepless nights ended when they were babies…
Also, braindead. I actually just wanted to let you know that the picture is absolutely stunning ????
What a beautiful echo ;P Love the pic and description. Put some tall teal grass swaying in the breeze bordering the water, a symphony of nature calls, and it sounds like a lovely dream to get lost in. Can’t wait to devour and imagine the next book. Love you all!
I usually notice two words too closely spaced, but I didn’t on first reading. Not until you showed the correction. This is why I rarely agree to be a beta reader. ????
Those are easy to miss.
❤️❤️❤️❤️ Fireflies!!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️
You’ve got to have respect for typos like that. Their resistance is inspiring.
I guess my question is, “How does one become a content editor?”
From what I’m seeing on this blog, it seems like it may be my dream job!
Hey Janna,
Please see this House A blog post for information on that 🙂 https://ilona-andrews.com/2019/audio-hips-and-other-things/
Thanks for sharing, all the hugs! ????
Ummmm, it was certainly very beautiful.
Onward and upward seems about right for today. Slogging through work and pausing to read a few chapters of the newest In Death is what’s half-working for me. It’s still too hot for a winter and I’m still too tired tho. Onward and upward 🙂
Thank you.
Somehow completely forgot it was out yesterday.
It’s a good book. I finished it last night. Another day or days in Eve Dallas’s world. ????
Eve Dallas and company got me through a health problem a couple years ago that turned out to be panic attacks/anxiety disorder. I read the whole series from the beginning, borrowing every book at my local library and the inter-library loan system they belong to. Every book and short story/novella. Read every night until I was exhausted enough to sleep. (Health problem under control.)
Now I get my name on the reserve list at the library as soon as it’s posted. Currently #15 of 19 on the list for this newest one!! ????????
It’s amazing what a difference small wording changes can make! Thank you for all that you do in crafting these stories we all love to read!
Two beautiful snippets in a day- mmmmhhh, perfect.
Olasard made my day and this one is a nice teaser. And difficult to spot for me as a layperson.
I do like the change! Repeating the same adjective several times always seems to throw me out of the story briefly. And mesmerizing is so much more interesting than just calling the fireflies beautiful.
Thank you for always finding time to write a new post! I am having a look at the blog every day because my life is very stressful and your posts help me to endure! And the best parts are of course the snippets! Thank you!
I am in awe of the care you put into your craft.
It shows!
Thank you.
Starting homeschool today for kids too young to be vaxxed was painful. I didn’t choose the teaching profession for a reason. Onward & upward indeed.
I feel for you. This would have been a real challenge for our family when the kids were in school. The older one wanted me to homeschool her at one point, because one of her friends was homeschooled. I explained that she would rapidly come to regret that choice, if I were to attempt it. I would be doing the same thing at this point though. Too many variants, not enough precautions.
Best wishes for the home schooling! Your comment reminded me of a sign from a Texas restaurant that I saw online: https://www.escape.com.au/destinations/north-america/usa/hilarious-lockdown-signs-are-just-what-we-need/image-gallery/9a0be35978be9107f6772e9692269d38
The first one relates to home schooling, but the rest are pretty funny too.
Hope you find it a good pick-me-up.
🙂
That was prefect! ????????????
Ford Prefect?
Smiley face!
OMG those are truly hilarious. Some of the later ones also relate to home schooling. They must have been crowd-sourced; surely no one could be that consistently funny all by themselves?
Thank you for posting this link. I laughed so hard I cried.
And thank you to House Andrews for this blog and post and the supportive replies. I really appreciate the BDH as a community.
Thank you! Thank you! Tears if laughter in my coffee!
Aye aye
To answer the post title’s question: yes it’s pretty. Anyone who is a copyeditor, beta reader, or author, I applaud you. My eyes would cross if I had to look at the same paragraph over and over.
This would be me after a while ????
I respect your slog. woo ha
You know, if you used “lovely” you could get some alliteration going…
Kidding! I can make a change every single time I look at a draft. At some point I have to pull the plug.
That said, today I was working on a block of text that was limited to 1K characters. I thought I had calculated the word/line count accurately, but it turned out I was almost a hundred characters over. Paring that sucker down enough to fit while leaving enough information to get the urgency across was a neat little challenge. The finished count was 999 characters. 😀
You’ve just brought back some hideous memories of abstract deadlines at my last job.
I think my boss still holds the submission record for both the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association – 39 for one annual session to each. I was the only secretary involved for the last 15 years of that, and we submitted to the American Society of Echocardiography every year as well.
That’s a lot of abstracts. Bet you’re enjoying retirement, or the new job as the case may be.
This is for grant applications. There is so much need, everywhere you look right now, that you really have to hit all the buttons you can to get funding. Ordinarily I’m all about brevity, but the higher up Maslow’s hierarchy you go, the more explanation required. And at this point psychological needs can truly be existential, especially for people who were already on the knife edge. That was a worthy use of my time.
Is pretty ????
Thank you for the pick me up! I didn’t notice the repetition the first read through and enjoyed the scene. But a simple word change made it even better. ❤️
Yeah this is why i’m not an editor of any kind! Took me a solid 2 minutes to figure out what was wrong with the first sentence. Being very dyslexic has its issues but one of my coping mechanisims was to learn to speed read (well speed read for me). So unnecessary words i don’t actually read I just let my brain fill in the blanks. So grammar, double words, missed spellings etc I usually miss compeltley!
Love the photo!
Same problem and same solution here. Speed reading was a life saver in college and various training classes’ So I zip through a book, enjoy it. Then go back and have a fine time enjoying all the nuance I missed first time through. Sort of doubles the fun.
This reminds me of Ardenweald ????
https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/page_media/AJB7K0WX56GI1590489981107.jpg
One of my many favorite things about the blog was seeing the picture of a scene and then readying about it. Totally should be done more for the ebooks, because I’m sure doing it for the hardcopies would involve even more printer issues.
I can’t believe that I’m the only one who noticed that the “tree” in the front is actually a dragon’s foreleg. (Now that I pointed it out, I bet you can’t un-see it.) It’s not the forest that’s breathing 🙂
Ha ha ha. Thank you, Ilona Andrews, for the post.
I love your writing, and this is a cool example of the process. It also proves you should not ask me to be a beta reader, because like your existing readers, I too missed the repetition of the word “beautiful”. My hat’s off to you for an excellent fix. But I’m curious: shouldn’t “the wilderness” just be “wilderness”?
I laughed but I would have hit my head against the desk and with each thump said I-hate-edit-ing (yes it needs to be an even number)
God bless, I’m not the only one struggling with “echo” words or phrases.