American Gods (69 page)

Friday, March 02, 2001

So the post today brought a copy of
American Gods
— a book, and a cover — from the UK. It's the Hodder uncorrected proof, and it is lovely. I was completely thrilled, mostly I think by the bookness of it. I also really liked the back cover copy, although it doesn't bear a whole lot of resemblance to the book it describes, having been written from my original outline and not from the text. So some of the facts are off, but the mood and the pitch and the tone are just right.

All of a sudden, it's starting to feel like something very real — a book, not just something I've been writing for a few years. posted by Neil Gaiman 3:05
PM

And the manuscript is safely at Harper Collins, and now I just have to figure out the best way of doing the UK copy edit for the Hodder edition (as I discovered when they sent me their list of queries, the biggest problem with sending electronic files of books around the world rather than printouts is that page numbers change depending on things like your default font size and the type of paper you're using — so my sending them a list of changes of the “delete comma after the word of on page 16 line 12” variety would be somewhere beyond useless).

The strangest thing about doing a copyedit is how much you learn. About the world, and about writing. Before I start I grab a pile of dictionaries, English and American, and a bunch of books on usage — Fowler's, and the
Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage
, and Bill Bryson's lovely
Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words
— and the
Chicago Manual of Style
, and wade in.

Is blowjob one word or two? Judgement or judgment? Wintry or wintery? Why has the copy editor crossed out ‘hessian' and replaced it with ‘burlap'? Aren't they two different fabrics? — twenty minutes of research and I figure out that they may be two different fabrics in the UK, but they stopped using the word hessian for rough hairy sack-type jute or hemp cloth in the US about two hundred years ago. Good. . .

I'd written “none of the passengers were hurt” and the copy editor's changed it to “none of the passengers was hurt” — Fowler's English Usage, the American English Usage, Harpers and Bill Bryson all agree that the idea that ‘None' is a singular noun is based on the misconception that it's a contraction of no one, which it isn't, and tell me it's plural if I want it to be. Good. I do.

Now, when I write dialogue I try and punctuate it to give some kind of indication of the rhythms of speech. As far as I'm concerned “Hi, Mike” and “Hi Mike” are two different things. The copy editor likes the first, and assumes that wherever I've put the second, it's because I've forgotten the comma. And I like to spell out “mister” if it occurs in dialogue. I just do. He's replaced them all with “Mr.” and I stet each one back the way it was, and fix a few that I've forgotten. . .

He's changed dumpster to Dumpster. Check. Yup, it's a trade-mark. Good call. Okay. He's changed the one occurrence of ‘whisky' to ‘whiskey'. Nope, it's a good scotch (Laphroaig), and that's how they spell it. Leave it. And here's Diet Coke changed to diet Coke. Is that right? Yup. Good man.

He's changed a sixteen wheeler to an eighteen wheeler in a metaphor but not when there are a cluster of them parked outside a strip club. I add another two wheels to the ones parked outside the Best Peap Show In Town. . .

Why has the copy editor changed “it's the objective case” to “it's the dative case” in a (very) short conversation about ‘who' vs ‘whom'? Do we even have a dative case in English? My schoolboy Latin, Greek and German are of little use, but none of the reference books seems to think that there's anything other than subject and object going on here, and I write STET.

And on, and on, for six hundred and fifty pages. And if all this seems pedantic, on the copy editor's part or on mine. . . well, yes. That's the point. He's paid not to see the wood for the trees. Actually he's paid to look up at the wood now and again, but mostly to keep track of all the leaves, and especially to make sure that Missy Gunther on page 253 isn't Missie Gunther when she returns on page 400.

(And as I type this, looking down to my assistant Lorraine's Xena mouse pad, I've just noticed that the copy editor corrected Xena: Warrior Princess to Xena the Warrior Princess, and I let it pass as I assumed that was the official trademark, but nope, I was right originally — quick phone call to Harper Collins “in five, just before the bank robbery, there's a Xena: Warrior Princess harem doll in the bankrupt stock store — can you fix it back the way it was?”)

Meanwhile, there's a list of queries in from the UK, only one of which is the same as the US copy edits (a twenty-five minute long half an hour I'd managed to create. Don't ask.)

I decide to lose the quote from a Blur song (Magic America) (which doesn't say very much, but which was in my head when I started the book, along with Elvis Costello's American Without Tears) and replace it with a quote from Lord Carlisle written just after the War of Independence about the hugeness of America and the way even their losses and disasters occurred on a massive scale. . . .

And now it's over and done. For three weeks, anyway, when the galleys will come back and I'll read it through a microscope for the second time, making sure that every comma is where it's meant to be. . .posted by Neil Gaiman 7:35
AM

One of the best things about finishing a book, is there are things you haven't been able to read that now you are.

When I'm writing a book – or even, when I know that one day I'm going to be writing a book – any fiction in possibly a similar area becomes taboo.

If my next book were to be a fictional life of Marco Polo, I'd not read any fiction to do with Marco Polo or Kublai Khan (and would probably have stopped reading it about five years ago): partly because I don't want to see how someone else did that idea, and partly because if someone did do the same thing that I was going to do, I don't want that route closed off because someone else has taken it already. It just keeps things simple.

It doesn't mean you won't be accused of plagiarism. I've still never read Christopher Fowler's
Roofworld,
although I love Chris Fowler as a writer, and have had a copy of
Roofworld
on my shelves since before it came out (they sent me a proof). But I knew I wanted to do a magic city under London novel, and
Roofworld
looked too close to what I planned to do for comfort. I left it unread, as I left Mike Moorcock's
Mother London
, and several other good books. Books I know I'd like I haven't read (and still haven't, since I want to go back to London Below one day).

One of the joys of finishing
American Gods
is that there are books I can read, and books I can reread. John James's
Votan
, for example. A book I read almost twenty years ago, and that I've wanted to reread for ages but didn't dare to, as I knew it had a scene I was going to have to do in
American Gods
. And when I finally read it, last week, I was pleased that the two scenes didn't resemble each other in any real way, and more pleased that twelve years spent getting as deeply into Norse stuff as anyone who doesn't do it for a living had left me with an enormous appreciation for the brilliance of James's novel. (It's about a wily second century Greek trader in Germany who becomes Odin – Votan – and to whom all the Norse myths happen, or at least, the stories that will become the Norse Myths. Hilarious, moving and, along with its sequel,
Not For all the Gold in Ireland,
the best mythic-historical fiction out there, apart from Gene Wolfe's
Soldier in the Mist
sequence, and maybe some Robert Graves.)

And now I'm reading a book I've wanted to read for five years, Martin Millar's
Good Fairies of New York
. I read the back jacket copy when I bought the book, and ruled it off limits as it might have strayed into
AMERICAN Gods
territory. Reading it in the bath today, it doesn't. It's just delightful Martin Millar, as funny and wise and solidly written as he gets at his best. posted by Neil Gaiman 7:15
PM

Let's see . . . well, the old entries are dropping off the bottom of the site, so we're setting up an archive. There are US quick&dirty proof copies of the book going out to booksellers and authors-for-blurbs right now; I'm doing as many cover letters as I can to them. (It'll be interesting to see how quickly they start showing up on ebay, and how much they go for.) We've finalised the jacket copy in the US, and got permission to use a line from an e-mail as a blurb on the back of the book. (It was something Teller, of Penn and Teller fame, and a very fine writer in his own right, wrote to me, when he read it, which, I thought, described the book I was trying to write perfectly.)posted by Neil Gaiman 1:32
PM

So, I was just starting to get up to speed on the DEATH: THE HIGH COST OF LIVING script when this morning brought with it from Harper Collins the US Galleys. So I rolled up my sleeves, took out my pen (the instructions they send say pencil, but I don't have a pencil here) and started in on them. Now it's just little things, and occasionally, fixing things I was too tired to fix the last time they went through (Harper Collins hyphenates or doesn't hyphenate on a system all of their own. . . why, I wonder, would face up become one word faceup?) and sometimes fixing things I'm pretty sure I did fix last time around but that weren't acted upon (dammit, I
like
blond for boys and blonde for girls). The scary point in

proofreading is that odd moment when suddenly, the marks on the paper become nothing more than marks on the paper. This is my cue to go and make a cup of tea. Normally they've fixed themselves and become marks that mean something when I get back. In this case, I decided that doing a journal entry (while the tea brews) might encourage them to head back into wordhood.

Changing the subject, I keep thinking about the Coen brothers who proudly announced when they released the directors cut of
Blood Simple
that far from adding any new material, they had managed to cut several minutes from it. I keep thinking about this in context of the book, this blogger journal, and the
American Gods
website. There is stuff I'm very happy to have cut from the manuscript. One story stands alone (I sent it out as a Christmas card this year) but there are some oddments that I cut out because they interrupted the flow of the story, and it was just a little leaner and worked a little better without them. I can imagine in ten years' time rereading
American Gods
and proudly cutting out several paragraphs.

So I think I may post a few here and there. There's one lecture from a character who never really even made it into the first draft, I keep meaning to transcribe from my notes and put up. The rest of them are full scenes or bits. . .

Here's a little one.
”I suppose I need a library card,” he said. “And I want to know all about thunderbirds.”

The woman had him fill out a form, then she told him it would take a week until he could be issued with his card. Shadow wondered if they spent the week sending out despatches to ensure that he was not wanted in any other libraries across America for failure to return library books.

He had known a man in prison who had been imprisoned for stealing library books.

“Sounds kind of rough,” said Shadow, when the man told him why he was inside.

“Half a million dollars worth of books,” said the man, proudly. His name was Gary McGuire. “Mostly rare and antique books from libraries and universities. They found a whole storage locker filled with books from floor to ceiling. Open and shut case.”

“Why did you take them?” asked Shadow.

“I wanted them,” said Gary.

“Jesus. Half a million dollars worth of books.”

Gary flashed him a grin, lowered his voice and said, “That was just in the storage locker they
found
. They never found the garage in San Clemente with the
really
good stuff in it.”

Gary had died in prison, when what the infirmary had told him was just a malingering, feeling-lousy kind of day turned out to be a ruptured appendix. Now, here in the Lakeside library, Shadow found himself thinking about a garage in San Clemente with box after box of rare, strange and beautiful books in it rotting away, all of them browning and wilting and being eaten by mold and insects in the darkness, waiting for someone who would never come to set them free.

posted by Neil Gaiman 11:33
AM

Hard work doing the US galleys. They were waiting for me when I got up Saturday morning, went off first thing this morning (Monday) and I didn't do anything else over the weekend, except go and eat some nice sushi.

Someone's done a lot of find and replaces — NEVER a good idea in galleys. Dave Langford put something in
Ansible
recently about how on the galleys of my novel
Neverwhere
someone Found-and-Replaced all the flats to
apartments
. People said things apartmently, and believed the world was apartment.

None of these were quite that bad – they were subtler. . .

F'rinstance: All instances of the word
round
have become
around
. Fine for walking around the lake, less helpful for the around glasses, the around holes in the ice;
blonde
has uniformly become
blond
, and so blonder has become blonder;
for ever
has become, universally,
forever
, and for everything thus became foreverything, and we also got foreveryone, forevery time and so on. Each had to be found and caught.