That isn’t to say copyediting isn’t weird (I could tell you stories), but editing one’s own work brings up a variety of questions that one has to answer herself.
For example, yesterday I spent more time than I should have deciding whether the Ents should stay in my manuscript. (I also am unsure whether Ents is uppercase or lowercase, but that’s a job for the professional editor side of my brain.) The Ents appear right after I mention The Hobbit. A person might conjecture that Ents appear in The Hobbit. But it isn’t clear, and two of my non-Tolkein-reading friends stumbled at them.
How many times do I have to qualify my dog’s name with “the dog”? One might think she were a human (or a tree person). She thought she was a human. Do people remember dog names from chapter to chapter?
What is the name for paper that is lined like notebook paper, but has a vertical line a third of the way across the page rather than at the left margin? Does it have a name? What is it for?
When I asked my spouse about the paper, he said, “What do I look like, Google?” And I said, “You know a lot of random facts. I was hoping that was one of them.” Spouse fail.
What questions do you ask while editing? Do I have to introduce Ents?
Ellen Goldstein 