The Road to Publishing: Pre-edits

I woke up this morning to discover an email from my Editor in my inbox, complete with a pre-edit checklist detailing the things I must do before it gets to the actual editing stage; such as 'Americanising' the spellings and formatting. There were lots of other things on the checklist but I do them already, thankfully.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos

During the creation of Christmas is Cancelled, I learnt a good tip for speech marks and have implemented it for all new manuscripts but it wasn't in time for this one.

Typically, English publishing format for speech marks is single (like 'these') yet American publishers require double (like "these"), but I have now switched to using "double" ones regardless of the intended publisher. It is far easier to do a find and replace on ", which is generally only ever used for dialogue, than it is for ', which is used for apostrophes, pluralising and quotes etc.

I will continue to write in English UK though, not US, as it would disrupt my flow if I tried to write in anything else - I will never write 'color' instead of 'colour' and using 'z' instead of 's' naturally, but it's something I can amend once it's written, if necessary.

Oh, and I've seen quite a few of the Christmas release authors receiving their cover art through already so I'm now getting very excited as it can't be long until I have mine too!

Anyway, with the impending deadline for a short story I'm in the throes of writing (expect a blog on writing outside the comfort zone soon!) and a quick turnaround on the pre-edits - on top of the usual family weekend activities to work around - I'd best get cracking...