I have...

A profound new respect for copy-editors.

A friend of my father's asked me to edit his novel recently. I've done plenty of editing before -- school papers for friends, beta reads for my writer's group, the other students in my writing classes, my online writing partners. I've done paid edits before too, mostly critiquing story, plot, characterization, all of the big things that need hammered out before a writer submits his/her story to agents or editors.

But this person requested line edits. Sentence by sentence, word by word. I'm a pretty thorough beta reader -- I copy-edit while I'm reading most of the time. Hell, sometimes I've even caved into the urge to copy-edit published novels (if I ever loaned my Kindle to anyone, they'd be like "wtf, Ellen. are you OCD?"*). But since that's "all" I'm looking for in this edit (they do not want input on plot or any content of the story), I'm focusing extra-hard on the line edits. And holy crap.

20 pages in, and I think my brain might explode soon.

It's not that the writer is bad at English or anything. They actually have a better grasp of grammar than I was expecting. There are just so many little things to look for: correct punctuation, passive voice, capitalization of terms, the font (when you use italics and when you don't), which adjectives to cut (cause there are almost always too many, no matter how experienced the writer).

This is definitely a fun new adventure in Becoming-A-Better-Editor, which in turn will hypothetically make me a More-Conscientious-Writer. But damn. We do not pay copy-editors enough. I don't know how much they make, I just know it's not enough.

Also, if I go blind after this week, I hope I can buy a reliable version of those voice-to-text things...

* By the way, I'm not. One look at my work desk would assure you of my non-OCD-ness.