The deadlines, they laugh at me!
Wow. Shortest edit letter in the history of publishing. (Or at least my history of publishing. And apparently my editor’s history of sending such things.)
Seriously, this thing is one page long. And the top half of that is letterhead followed by the Standard Introductory Paragraph of “Thank you for sending this to me, it’s great, here’s a few nice things about it.” Three paras of Things To Fix, and we’re done.
Mind you, it isn’t three paras of “here’s a few typos;” the three things she touches on are a little more pervasively problematic. As I put it in my response to her, they’re of the “one sentence to describe, rather more to fix” variety. But really? This is the kind of edit letter that makes one come close to collapsing in weak-kneed relief. Oh thank god, she doesn’t want me to rip out this entire plotline and change the ending and replace that character with a one-legged midget from Morocco. Just a few things that aren’t quite clear or powerful enough.
The downside? With the edits so relatively light, she wants to know if I can get it back to her sooner than the agreed-upon date of Oct. 22nd. Which would be absolutely doable . . . if there weren’t a wedding in the way. As it stands, I’ve sent a very waffly response to the effect of “can I play with it for a week and give you an estimate then?” variety.
We’ll see what I can pull off, here.
