American Gods

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 ocurrence 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 refence 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

Wednesday, March 07, 2001

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).