Off to Press

On editing my debut novel for the very last time

Well, it’s done.

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary, the novel that has been known by several other names over the course of the past fifteen years, is being set in stone.

And by stone, I mean ink.

My proofs arrived last Thursday, followed by a fierce headache. I felt sure I could turn them around before Christmas, so I gave myself the deadline that would work best for my editor: Dec. 21. Except, then, that headache.

“You’re stressed,” my husband said.

I had been waiting for this moment, this last look at my first novel, since I started writing in elementary school, reading author interviews, and learning how the process worked. How could I have a headache?

Maybe he was right. The stakes were so high. My body often crashes when something big is expected of me. Or it could have been my closeup glasses prescription getting old or a response to a recent airplane trip, which still had my ears popping.

Whatever the cause, I paused and took care of myself. I napped. I drank fluids. I took migraine-relief supplements.

I’ve never relaxed on a deadline, let alone one this important. I throbbed my way through some edits, too, first going through the comments the proofreader had. The changes and queries and small catches. Just enough to feel like I was making some progress.

It helped to see what was there. To know the work expected of me.

By the time I felt better, I had only a handful of days left to make my deadline, but I had a much-clearer head. Once I finished working through the proofreading marks, I went back to the beginning and read the whole manuscript.

I hire copyeditors and proofreaders, as a book publisher, because I tend to get caught up in the story. I just believe whatever the author says instead of poking and prodding at the details. But this time, I felt like I couldn’t let myself get away with anything. It was my last chance to find mistakes. To re-chart the timeline, yet again, making sure everyone’s birthdays and all the seasons and years added up. To make sure all the quote marks were curly.

What I left behind, what I didn’t see, might show up in readers’ reviews as disappointment. With a tight deadline, I acknowledged that and kept working, then hit send after dinner on December 20, so my editor would find the manuscript in her inbox the next morning. As promised.

Whole swaths of this novel have changed over the years. And I have changed. I was newly pregnant with my now-fourteen-year-old when I first envisioned a music box novel. For many years, my protagonist Henri was the younger brother. His relationship to his older brother, Jean-Jacques, was central to the story until an editor suggested the stakes would be higher if Henri were the heir to the family workshop. So I cut Jean-Jacques, who had a swagger about him. (Serves him right.) Then I spent years working on a swath of story set in Five Points, New York, with a whole new cast of characters and misadventures. All of that is gone now.

All of my major edits marinated for a while; I had time to consider. Time to reweave the threads. To decide, Is this really what the story needs?

But all that process work, all that time tinkering, led to these five slender days of proofing. And letting go.

This transition, much to my surprise, didn’t get marked with anxiety. It felt like a routine exercise, just another piece of this long publishing process. Okay, this is done now. I expected bigger emotions, worries clouding my sleep.

The few times I started perseverating about what ifs—what if I didn’t catch everything, what if my last-minute timeline adjustments ruined something?—I shrugged at myself. I’m neurodivergent. My brain does bizarre and incredible things, and one of the things is this manuscript. I wrote this novel. I sold it to Lanternfish Press. I am going to see my book on bookstore shelves like I’ve always wanted. If my brain has missed something, not caught a discrepancy or added a mistake in the flow of fixing one, then so be it. That’s my brain too.

Besides, my editor will work through my changes, making sure, making sure. She chose my book. Her edits have been smart and incisive. I trust her with my story.

YOUR BRIGHT SIDE INVITATION: How and when have you trusted people in your writing and/or publishing journey? How has it felt, if you’ve been published before, to let go?

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