But apparently, I’m not the only one. There is a curious thing that happens when something you’ve written is professionally reviewed – you become all too aware of how poor a grasp you have of the English language.
Once you make a submission and, god-willing, it’s accepted, you go through a round of reviews. The first round involves a professional editor going through your manuscript line-by-line and sending it back to you with a mountain of suggested changes (well, I got a mountain, I can’t speak for everyone). Alongside this initial large review, you are given an ‘Author’s Report,’ which contains a numbered list of the main themes of the suggestions, essentially, any suggested changes that are made frequently throughout the script. I dread to think what mine would have looked like without my own constant self-reviewing, and the thorough review of my partner, prior to submission – I suspect it probably would not have been accepted.
Each item on the list has the gist of it in bold, followed by a brief explainer. I don’t remember everything on my list, but there were ten or so in total. An example being that I used the lowercase when referring to ‘the devil,’ but it’s technically a proper noun so should have been ‘the Devil.’ There was a standout though, and in bold it just said: COMMAS. The editor in question was kind enough to start the explanation by saying that even seasoned writers had trouble with commas (or words to that effect), but essentially, I never used them correctly.
I still don’t. There are several sentences throughout this post with multiple commas and it’s highly unlikely I’ve used them all correctly. I didn’t even question the changes with respect to the commas, I just accepted them.
Some other changes I had read through in a bit more detail, largely for my own understanding rather than to disagree. Our main disagreement was on the use of the word fleshlight, which was thought to be a typo and flashlight, so I had to explain, in a semi-professional context, exactly what a fleshlight was, and how I had used it correctly.
After this initial review, the script goes through another round where the changes are applied and it is sent back to you for final review. At this point it’s recommended that you get someone else to read it, someone who hasn’t already seen it. I asked a friend of mine that I trusted with it, and after we had both made our final checks, it went back to the publisher for the final time. And thus, the final draft is ready to be signed off. In total, through my personal reviews and the publishers, I would say there were six total drafts – some with very minor changes. It’s a long process, but a good one, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll learn a lot. Except how to use commas, no one will ever know how to use commas.