Copy edits always seem to take me longer than I think they will. My plan for the weekend was to do an initial read through and handle the simple queries, but I didn't make it. I still have about a third of the book to get through. Part of it was that I participated in a plot group session and that took up a lot of time, but part of it is that it just takes longer to read through the manuscript than I think it will. Always.
Back when I wasn't writing and I read a lot, I could make it through a single title story in about 6-8 hours, depending on the author and the amount of dialogue she used. Or the amount of description. I always skim description because I hate reading it and I have my own pictures of the story in my head anyway. Somehow, I always think that my reading time for a novel written by someone else should equal the time it takes to do an initial read through of my own work. I always seem to forget that I'm going to stop and pick at my stuff.
One of my biggest problems is repeated words. I love it when the copy editor (CE) marks that stuff for me because no matter how carefully I watch out for it, I never seem to see them myself. I don't know why. Fortunately, the CE who went through In the Darkest Night did do this. The CE also pointed out my page where almost every sentence had the word had in it. Reading that made me cringe, especially because I didn't see it myself. How could I miss that? Zoinks!
Anyway, I will continue to do my initial read through tomorrow and hopefully finish up so I can start the second round. First pass is just general stuff, the easy things that are quick fixes. The other passes through copy edits are more intensive for me and I know those will take longer.
