On Christmas Eve morning I received a package from my publisher Little, Brown. Inside that envelope was my manuscript in its stark copy-edited form.

What are copy edits, you ask? Oh, they are just the thing that forces you to stare into the abyss of your own incompetence. (Thanks to my friend, colleague and fellow writer David Bloom for that apt description.)

I’m not just talking grammar or typos here, people. Though my astoundingly thorough copy editor caught all of those and then some, it seems. I’m talking about every single, solitary, little detail that didn’t addd up in “The Mockingbirds.” Like how I originally wrote that the antagonist didn’t reside in the Brooks Hall dorm, but two chapters later he did. Like how, my main character’s roommate was sitting at her desk during a conversation and then two pages later mysteriously hopped up from her bed. And how about the fact that I referred to a certain location on campus with a nickname that made no sense out of context because I had forgotten I deleted the explanation of the nickname five pages before? (Note to fellow writers: when you delete scenes and paragraphs make sure other elements in the story don’t depend on them!)

Oh, there’s more, so much more. Things I can’t even tell you I did. Words I am too ashamed to admit I misspelled. Antiquated phrases I used.

But my biggest sin of all is this one.

copyedits

It says: “How many days have passed? Timeline very hard to track t/o (throughout).”

And she was right. Because you could drive a hovercraft through the timeline gaps in my novel. After the linear pace of the first five chapters,  I rarely mentioned what day it was or how many days had gone by. In fact, in chapter eleven I even wrote that a certain thing that happened at the close of the previous chapter happened both last night and last week. In the same chapter! I didn’t even catch the error.

And that’s why I bow down before my most capable copy editor for letting me stare into the abyss of my own incompetence (and rectify it) before the public can.