As the calendar shifts to August I find myself going through the final checklist of items prior to the September release of Bygones, my fourth Vasily Korskovach novel. Much of it is what you might expect, including making any final last-minute edits on the manuscript based on editorial comments; it’s also the stage at which the more physical aspects of the final product of novel writing become visible. Don’t get me wrong: seeing my work appear in the Kindle Store is pretty darn exciting, but I’ve never gotten over the joy of receiving a package from the printer holding the proofs for the paperback or hardcover editions.
The paperback proof for Bygones arrived last night and I’ve already begun flipping through it, scanning for layout issues that weren’t apparent when I reviewed the initial PDF version. That’s just the first step; the next one involves getting a nice cup of coffee, sitting down, and physically reading the book cover to cover to ensure that nothing glaring got past the many eyes that had already reviewed it up that point. There’s no question it’s one of the hardest final steps to complete, for more often than not, I find myself getting lost in the story and having to back up and re-start being the critical reader.
I have to admit that I do some light editing as I write; it’s an unfortunate habit born from having had to write so many term papers in college and doing so on deadlines that required getting the manuscript right out of the gate. When I transitioned to fiction writing years later, I had to dial back that tendency quite a bit, for obsessing over sentence structure was often a killer of creativity. The rise of fabulous word processing software makes it insanely easy to get lost in those weeds while writing; while I am a huge fan of being able to correct spelling errors on the fly, I often feel like the built-in grammar checker is judging me, making it hard to ignore the inevitable double-underlines that appear as I craft a story.
I had an English teacher back in the day who lamented how technology had in some ways damaged the writing process; they were a huge proponent of doing a first draft on a typewriter, something I have never done (and plan to never do). I completely understand the concept, for the general idea of just letting the words flow is a sound one, something that is quite difficult to achieve when the AI is literally looking over your shoulder. And yet, somehow, I never find it in me to completely turn off such tools; I may not always agree with the suggestions during the first draft, but there have been times on the second or third pass where they make sense — at a point when the full story has been developed completely, and I understand (in my head at least) how I want the language to work.
I suppose it’s a bit of a win that Microsoft Word now recognizes Korsokovach and has stopped prompting me to correct it as a spelling error; the same goes for Windeport and, oddly, Colbeth. As a developer, I completely understand the brilliance of what is going on under the hood with my word processor, but as a writer, I still feel like I have a love-hate relationship with it…