*Sigh*. Attempting to finish the final review of my new SF novel so I can submit it to Sheila Gilbert at DAW Books this week. Just discovered the name of my planet does not mean what I thought it did. Had to change the name of the planet. (It’s now Marseguro, which means “safe sea” in both Spanish and Portugese, if you must know.) Thank goodness for global search and replace.
This kind of thing never happens to mainstream writers.
Before, the planet was named Marcasero, which I thought meant “sea home” but apparently means either “homemade sea” or “sea caretaker” or something along those lines.
I can live with Marseguro. In fact, “safe sea” is a better name than “sea home.” I’m thinking of making it the title, i.e., “Don’t miss the exciting new science fiction novel Marseguro by Edward Willett.”
Not sure what the editor will think, but I hope to find out soon!
3 comments
Another good trick is searching for all uses of passive verbs like “was” and “were.” You can’t replace all of them, but you’ll almost certainly find some you can replace with more active verbs, which go a long way toward brightening your writing.
Global search-and-replace would have helped me years ago at the Weyburn Review when I referred to a new pastor as “Rev. Bellows” throughout a story. Turned out his name was actually spelled “Bellous.”
Several years ago I was involved with a writing critique group. I had several people mention my frequent use of exclamation marks. I searched and foundthere were an embarassing number of them.
I changed them all to periods in each of my three books in the works, then redid them. I’ll second the praise for such editing programs.
I like it, Ed!
Yes, thank goodness for search and replace. A few weeks ago, for reasons not worth going into, I had to go through my novel and change every instance of the word “shed” to “shack.” The shed/shack is significant, so was threaded throughout the manuscript.