Real-time copyediting queries
4 Comments Published by Deanna Hoak December 13th, 2007 in blog, copyeditingDavid Louis Edelman has posted (with my permission) an IM conversation he and I had this morning, as I was copyediting his novel MultiReal. I love it when I get to communicate with an author in real time during the copyediting process, because I think the back-and-forth helps clarify matters better than a simple query.
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Endeavour, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I became the first and only copyeditor ever short-listed for a World Fantasy Award.
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I love that conversation! And now I know I’m not alone in the weirdness of being an online copyeditor who never meets the authors she works with. :)
That’s pretty interesting, thanks for posting it! You know, it would make life so much easier for both the author and copyeditor if they could communicate with each other faster rather than through email or whatever. Then again, would that make the process slower? I’ve never done any copyediting or professional writing so I don’t really know how it would work either way.
That’s precisely what I do on a lot of rewrites for A&A stories. Real-time conversations when we both have the text open to the relevant section are so much more efficient than emailing each other back and forth!
As David states, I’ve been told that chat edits is rare. You have to wonder why, though. Maybe it’s just people who are not used to the technology who have not caught the wave. But chat edits just make sense.
Have any of you used “net meeting” or it’s recent replacement? It allows you to share an application over the internet while you exchange messages. Two people can look at the same open document even though they are in different cities. I’ve never used in for editing but I have used it to discuss the contents of a document or to review pictures or spreadsheets. Friday I did a presentation using WEBEX which does something similar. It works better but costs money because you use a hosting site. That presentation involved people in both the US and Europe. It also had graphics. For simple text, “net meeting” works fine.
Have a good holiday,
John