Alfred Stieglitz: Self-Portrait with camera, tripod, and pistol (1886)

"It feels like the thousand deaths …"

This week promises to become one of those weeks that were. So many weeks come and go without leaving many footprints. I recently failed to recall entire quarters where I'd dedicated myself to writing series now lost to memory, if not necessarily to history. I reassured myself that nobody remembers all the books Twain wrote, and he remains perhaps the most popular writer in our history. This week, my copyeditor promised to deliver her completed work on my pending manuscript. I am not warmly anticipating reading her results. Though I firmly believe in the copyeditor's beneficial contribution, I would have preferred to forego this specific stage of manuscript development. I'd asked her last December if she could provide a quick check to prove that my manuscript required her effort. She asked me to send her a few pages. She almost immediately responded that she found five glaring errors in the first paragraph!

Humbled into acceptance then, I told her I'd get back to her after some deeper consideration. This part of the publishing process unsettles me. I want to believe that after so many decades practicing, I might have come close to mastering my native language, but copyeditors seem to know better. It may be that they inhabit a different context, so that an author cannot reach an adequate altitude to properly peer down upon their work. The author lacks that particular perspective that prevents embarrassing faux pas from getting published. The whole business feels unsettling, then, since I publish content daily without the benefit of a professional copy editor. I feel as if I'm an inadequate author, one who still needs a nursemaid trailing along to ensure he stays out of trouble.

Further, I struggle to read my writing. Oh, I've read plenty of it. I read each installment I post at least three times. By the time I finally hit the key that will take it away from me and publicly post it, I'm nearly sick of it, even my better pieces. To take up a collection, nearly ninety sections worth, never produces a light-hearted experience for me, especially when I'm proofreading the copyeditor's efforts. Like with the grammar checker, I second-guess every morning, second-guessing proves to be a fussy business. It all relies too much upon context, which shifts. I prefer my copyeditor to make my prose sound even more like I wrote it, preserving my voice. The worst ones produce a product that could only have been written by some chatbot: devoid of soul, flat in texture, perfect, and so out of place in a necessarily imperfect world.

I am presently employing myself to prelive whatever's coming. The experience might be fine. It could even be reassuring. I was referred to this copyeditor by people whose judgment I trust, but I still need to catastrophize, perhaps to improve the quality of the experience when it finally arrives. It seems most unlikely that it could be as bad as I anticipate. It seems much more likely that I will find myself pleasantly surprised. Still, I wrote this manuscript seven years ago. Much has changed since I first so-called "finished" it. Several close friends read and commented on it, which, of course, changed the original. I left it sitting for years, where it apparently changed again. I added a preface and an additional addendum as well as copyedited the whole damned thing again before finally finding a publisher and necessitating this copyediting step.

Publication isn't the birth of any book. The birth occurs before the ink ever hits the still-to-be-bound pages. It occurs when the concept finally comes together, when the preparation's as good as it will ever become. When the copyeditor and the writer come together to finally give the work their combined blessing. The rest is mere christening, much ceremony and some fanfare, which will be exciting but not nearly as exacting as the actual birthing work. I am wise to experience Trepidation now. I am poised on a fresh precipice of greatness, where I will finally feel exposed to the full force of a real and trusted professional's judgment about my work. I might even find remnants of myself in there and finally come to understand what the Hell I was writing about all that time ago. Copyediting forces the thousand deaths necessary for any manuscript to get to heaven. It feels like the thousand deaths, though, and so seems best approached with Trepidation.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #FollowingChapters, #PureSchmaltz