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Second Round of Editing Is Complete

The manuscript for Brig-Wallis Preparatory School for Boys has just gone through its second round of editing--called "copyediting." The team over at CreateSpace handed my manuscript over to a second editor--"Jenny"--for this stage of the process. I like the fact that a "fresh set of eyes" had a look at my story--especially since her reception of it was as positive and encouraging as the first! Plus, "Jenny" was much more rules-oriented than "Gregg," so I learned a ton about very persnickety punctuation, grammar, and spelling rules. (Who are these Chicago Manual of Style people anyway--and how and where did they get so much power and sway?)
      In an interesting aside, I wanted to write each chapter in a style and with the spelling and punctuation customs and rules of the countries that they took place in--which means the chapters taking place in Switzerland would conform to Swiss punctuation and terms, the chapters taking place in France, China, and the UK to their specific and idiosyncratic rules and guidelines. But, the American system--ruled over by this "Chicago Manual of Style" (remember the days before standardized spelling, Noah Webster?)--make this challenging to pull off, to say the least. Bottom line: I do want the book to get published--the story to get out there, so compromises have been made...
      The Facebook presence I've tried to launch has been equally rewarding as people have been very supportive and encouraging. Now the Amazon Kindle world has been a little challenging to negotiate, but even that seems like we're coming to the end.
     What I thought was going to be drudgery (the editing and re-writing process) has actually turned out to be quite the opposite. I have really enjoyed getting to know my manuscript inside and out, finding and correcting the previously unseen mistakes or awkward passages. Plus, language/linguistics geek that I am, I've really enjoyed surfing the Internet to discover all of the variations in choice with regard to writing, printing, punctuation, spelling and grammar. (Again: How did the Chicago Manual of Style earn so much power and sway?) Again, I find myself ruminating over the days in which spelling and grammar usages were not standardized. Linguistic prescriptivism connotes a preference of one rule or style over others, which does imply a kind of aesthetic subjectivity by some person or persons of "authority." I have encountered along this path of writing for publication instances in which editors and readers express a kind of resistance to change in language--which seems at odds with the nature of this amazing language that is the English language. It also makes me greatly appreciate the fact that I don't live in a nation or use a language that has a governing body that decides what is "right" or "wrong," what is "acceptible" or "unacceptible" in speaking and writing practices. English is an amazing, fluid, ever-expandable language...which makes me wonder why writer translators claim languages such as Spanish and Russian are so difficult to render with accuracy into English. I guess this just goes to show how even the largest language in the world, English, is still so very limited; in the end, language is still such a limiting and confining communication tool. No wonder audiobooks and theater and television are so popular. No wonder linguists agree that 60 to 80 percent of the conveyance of meaning in communication depends upon body language and voice tone. Words are, apparently, so overrated!

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