30 March 2009
Entry 20
Done!
It’s 2:21am, on Monday, 30 March. And it’s all done. I’ve read it through. It’s pretty good, I think – I hope.
There wasn’t too much to do to it today, largely just tiny bits of re-punctuating for rhythm, changing the odd word that sounded not quite right, just fiddling here and there. One or two little tweaks per page, more or less. (Below you can download a pdf of one chapter with the final day’s little polishes marked, if you’re interested in seeing it. I’ve chosen one of the chapters that was most changed, but even this had no more than a handful of little cosmetic things …)
This final stage is so pleasurable – so satisfying to be able to read through from beginning to end, and to see how things all fit together, just as you would when reading a book for the first time with some momentum – especially a book that’s a little tricky as this one is, with quite a few characters and lots of complicated political factions etc. It all just sort of makes sense when you read it like this, in a way that it simply doesn’t when you’re sitting looking at one single page for hours (especially when that page has question marks and queries and competing-possibilities all over it), and when last time you read the preceding chapter may have been two months ago and so you can’t really remember it too well … So the whole time you’re just sort of trusting that it will work as a unified thing, and it’s a relief when it does …
So … I’ve just emailed the full manuscript to the publishers, Arcadia, and we’ll wait and see what happens next. Arcadia’s great editor, Angeline, will be the first person to read it, and she’ll probably come back to me with some queries; Angeline is also the person who’ll be doing the light copy-edit on it in the coming weeks to get it ready for typesetting. And then proof-reading, and then – at last – to press!
I’ll keep you posted.
Download the final polishing of Chapter 4 (Adobe Acrobat .doc 23Mb)
If you would like to comment on this blog, email translationblog@booktrust.org.uk
Estação das Chuvas © José Eduardo Agualusa
English translation © Daniel Hahn
