I received my first ever galley proofs from my editor today!
A galley proof, for those of you who haven’t yet seen one, is the text of your story after the editor has finished with it, so you can examine it for typos, misspellings and grammatical errors. What it is not, really, is a chance for you to rewrite things. That should have been done long before this stage, unless you have a burning desire to piss off your editor. Like I said, this is the first time I’ve done this, but that seems pretty obvious to me.
I read through the proof quickly this morning and was pleasantly surprised that nothing had really been changed. I found several commas inserted where I wouldn’t normally put them. (They were used correctly, but I lean towards not using commas, if the meaning is clear without them. I think they break up the rhythm of the sentence.) I also came across a word that was spelled differently than I would spell it (I’ve no doubt that I’ve been misspelling it) and one clear grammatical error that I suspect was in my original draft and just slipped by the editor.
I had wondered if any of my descriptions of life in Viking Age Iceland might be pared down. There were places where I detailed the foods in the larder and other minutiae that I thought the editor might find unnecessary. But she left them in. She also left in the three or four Old Icelandic words I used, such as kamarr (an indoor latrine — a luxury in that time period) and skyr (a soupy goat-milk cheese).
The proof also contained the cover for the anthology, with my title on it, and my bio, as well as some ads for other stories at the end. It basically looks like it will look when it’s published. It looks wonderful, and I can’t wait until it’s available for my family and friends to see!
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