It's a perfectly good word, damn it

[pbray]

Copy-edits continue. Brief whine: the copy editor apparently objects to the word here. In virtually all places where Josan thinks about his location, the word here is replaced by the island or the lighthouse.

I think by now the readers know he's a lighthouse keeper on a freaking island. We don't need to keep bludgeoning them over the head with the fact. It's okay for me to have a sentence that says He could no longer stay here.

It's the little things that drive you crazy in the copy-editing process.

But I will be strong. I will remind myself how much worse this could be. I will persevere, and one way or another these will be finished today.

Early afternoon update: Another 100+ pages done. Having left the island, we now see the word here being changed to in the village, in the city, at her home, in Karystos, etc. Grrr.

Update at 7PM: Made it to the end of the manuscript. Need to do one final skim through to ensure that all changes made sense, and then it gets dropped in the mail.

Comments

[califmole.livejournal.com]

Commiserations.

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

Change some of them back and see if they slide by? *insert mischievous grin*

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Well so far I've put tape flags on all the changes, and in the final pass will decide which ones get STET'ed.

[scott-lynch.livejournal.com]

Double commiserations!

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

You need a STET stamp. :-)
Meanwhile, I've only gotten to page 5 on mine. But so far, I've spoken to my parents three times today. :-)
And no, you can't have one of the bears.

Bumper sticker

[larryhammer]

"STET happens."

---L.

Re: Bumper sticker

[pbray.livejournal.com]

We could make a fortune selling these at cons....

[mariannelee.livejournal.com]

Copy-edits continue. Brief whine: the copy editor apparently objects to the word here. In virtually all places where Josan thinks about his location, the word here is replaced by the island or the lighthouse.

I think by now the readers know he's a lighthouse keeper on a freaking island. We don't need to keep bludgeoning them over the head with the fact. It's okay for me to have a sentence that says He could no longer stay here.

Oooooo, one of my pet peeves when I edit. You see, here is in the present, but the story (I presume) is told in past tense. However, having said that, I will let a few 'heres' slip through if the story is in first person, or so inside the character's thoughts that it might as well be.

[mariannelee.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I find 'there' an acceptable substitute. Is your CE this anal about everything else?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

There was inserted only sparingly. It was the clunky insertion of locations such at the lighthouse, on the island, in the village, in the city, at her home etc. that I found awkward and jarring.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Agree with your point, but when the character is deep inside his own head, he's thinking "I can't stay here" or "How did I get here?"

I don't want him thinking "I can't stay on the island" or "How did I get to this clearing?"

It's one of those compromises that happens in copy-edits. The copy editor has changed a number of instances of the word here. I'm going through and agreeing with some of these changes, but disagreeing with others.

[deannahoak.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I just don't agree with this (and I've been editing for fifteen years). "Here" and "there" are spatial referents, not temporal ones. Thus you could have the lines "He looked out at the signs of the approaching storm. Here, the skies were still vivid. There, though, at the edge of the land he'd claimed as his own, dark clouds clutched at the ground."

If you try to change every instance of "here" to "there" just because the story is set in past tense, you're putting the reader outside the character's viewpoint, as though the reader is standing in one place and the character is in another. Past tense by itself doesn't do that.

[mariannelee.livejournal.com]

Actually, 'here' can mean 'at this present place' or 'at this present time,' and those are only the noun usages. As an adverb it is even more open. Ditto for 'there.'

But when the author has not been in the character's head much, I always get a sense of suddenly jumping into it. As a reader, it feels like a switch from 3rd person to 1st. And this all depends upon how the story is told. If it is a retelling of past events, then I think 'there' is more appropriate.

But hey, why quibble?

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." --Somerset Maugham

[deannahoak.livejournal.com]

Web11 has the noun definition of "here" as only "this place." Web3 (unabridged) gives the following:

1 : the present location or juncture : this place *where do we go from here* *from here on the story gets more interesting* — opposed to there
2 : immediacy in space abstracted from the other qualities and relations of the immediate experience *a here to which we relate all theres— James Ward*

As an adverb, "here" can mean "now," but if you couldn't substitute "now" in the sentence (and you couldn't in Patricia's examples), it wouldn't be appropriate to substitute "there." The usage she's referring to is place deixis. (http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsPlaceDeixis.htm) Hence, as I'm saying, you distance the reader from the character if you use "there."

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Cool, a latin term.

Thanks for the explanation.

I have a working knowledge of grammar rules, but often have to go with what sounds right to me. In this case I knew the changes didn't work, but in documenting why I STET'ed them I merely said "This is clunky and awkward."

[deannahoak.livejournal.com]

Huh. I think the only time I've recommended changing "here" in a manuscript was in an instance where it honestly wasn't clear. If the character says "I can't stay here" when he is hiding in a cave, for example, but he really means that he has to get out of the country, not just get out of the cave.