Thread by @UrsulaV

And now, back to the Copyedits Of Doom. I am now copy and pasting STET because I got tired of typing it.

As far as I can tell, they went through and systematically removed every instance of "really" and "very." So if a character says "This is bad, this is really really bad!" they now say "This is bad, this is bad."

I am really very displeased.

Fortunately, once I'm through this, I will never have this copyeditor again. The editor-editor has learned of this and expressed apologies.

They changed "I would never crap peacefully again" to "I would never again crap peacefully" and this is so minor and so petty a change, and also tells you something about what narrators in my books think about.

WTF. They think "Over the course of the day" should be "Over the day"? That's not a real phrase.

"It seemed like a very long time ago now" just got changed to "It seemed now like a long time ago" and I'm honestly sorry to keep complaining about this, gang, I know it's tedious, but just what the HELL is this?!

A lot of these changes are just weird minor things that aren't egregious, but are just...pointless? Does it matter if the narrator is screaming internally or internally screaming? Why change it except just to change it?

They also hate dialogue tags and pulled a bunch of them out. Which, y'know, okay, I think "said" is invisible but it'll flow a little quicker. Fine. But occasionally they pull the tag and fail to pull the relevant punctuation so there's rogue " lying around.

And while I'm complaining, EVERY SINGLE TIME I said "There was an X in the Y" they changed it to "An X was in the Y" no matter what. The words "There was" apparently are like a red flag to a bull for this person.

In one or two places, it's fine, probably improves the flow. If I'm saying "There was a monster in the room", however, I do not wish to say "A monster was in the room."

"Otherwise everyone in the neighborhood would..." just got changed to "Otherwise all in the neighborhood would..." and honestly, I'm a little glad they keep doing these obscenely wrong things because then I stop questioning myself about the minor ones.

BUT! In defense of copyediting in general, they caught the spot where I spontaneously changed a character's name to the name of a character in a different book I was working on at the time. So you know, they're vital to have. Just not like this.

They decided I meant "racked" instead of "wracked" for the whole manuscript. Woo.

What. The. Hell. "Which I happened to know had a Made in China stamp..." became "Which knew had a Made in China stamp..." They were so eager to cut my extra words they cut the I as well.

I just wrote "STET and shame on you" so that's where we're at now.

Oh, now they've decided to change "axe" to "ax" even though those are both fine.

They just changed "It was only dumb luck and stubbornness that led us back" to "it only dumb luck and stubbornness had led us back" so now I'm copyediting the copyeditor.

"Maybe there had been more there once" changed to "Maybe more have been there once." This had to have been done by a computer.

"There's nowhere else I'd rather be" became "I would rather be nowhere else."

"...but he also doesn't say I'm wrong" became "but he doesn't also say I'm wrong." We are on the second to last page and it's a good thing because I am about to start urinating in rage.

And DONE.
And SENT.
And a note written saying "Please have someone else look this over again because I don't know if I caught everything, and also do not unleash this copyeditor on innocents."

I have to take an elderly cat to the vet in about half an hour and after that, I am just gonna lie on the ground and drink tequila straight from the bottle.

Okay, since I’m early to the vet—Smokey our venerable Siamese’s teeth are bothering him, nothing terribly scary—a few thoughts.

1) I write a lot of books. A copyeditor this bad comes along once in a blue moon. This is not normal and is definitely not something to expect.

2) Copyeditors are usually great. The sort of things that DID need changing in this book—occasional typos, I mixed up a type of hat, changed a name halfway through—those are all good catches!

3) If, by grave mischance, you get edits like this, 99% of the time, I would advise you to just send the manuscript back. I almost did. The editor said I could, but by that point I had spent so long doing it that...eh, I was invested. (Also secretly wanted to see how bad it got.)

4) If I was not a veteran of many edits and as insecure as a steel bear trap about my authorial voice, edits like this could be really traumatic. You’d start questioning how you wrote, you’d think this was normal. You’d cry into your keyboard instead of getting mad.

It’s honestly kind of worrisome because OMG this person could have really messed a baby author up.

5) I write STET, on average, oh, maybe once every ten thousand words in your usual run of edits, often less. In this, I was lucky to get through a page without STETing. This, again, DEEPLY ABNORMAL.

6) All this being said, Copyeditor Wot Thinks They’re A Co-Author is a known phenomenon. (I don’t think that’s what happened here, actually, but I’ve had that one too.) This must be crushed immediately and with prejudice lest, like the Joker, they escape and harm others.

7) Always remember, your editor bought the book because they liked what you wrote. If the copyeditor is rampaging through that rather than just sprinkling magic correction dust and catching little glitches, they are probably not doing what the editor wants.

UPDATE: Made @NeolithicSheep, who is a freelance copyeditor, read this person’s work. As a result, the background of our latest Productivity Alchemy podcast is littered with distant “WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS?!” cries in the background.