Is it just me, or is there something very final about handing over a package to the person behind the counter at the Post Office? I’d forgotten how nerve-wracking it can be…how I have to fight the urge to snatch back any package that’s full of my words. The last time I was mailing manuscripts was more than a year ago, during my agent search. Since then, everything from submissions to revisions to line edits have been emailed as attachments. And somehow, pressing "send" is easier for me than handing over a big pile of papers and leaving a building empty-handed. But copy edits happen on paper. Mine looked like this…
There were, if I recall, four or five pages without any marks. Yay, me!
You learn a lot about yourself during the copy edit stage. I have an uncanny ability to mess up words like shoe box and crab apple, both of which I’ve written correctly in this blog. The manuscript was another story. Sometimes, in my brilliance, I’d write the word two different ways on the same page, to be sure of getting it right once.
This one puzzled me. Somewhere, I missed the memo that there’s no longer a comma before the word "too" when it’s used at the end of a short sentence. For example: I’m befuddled too. No comma.
Anyway…in case the lady at the Post Office happens to read this, I’m sorry I kept trying to tug that package back out of your hands. I let it go eventually. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to say goodbye.