Too Many Exclamation Points !!!

So, the edits are finally done and sent off to the publisher. Yeah! Now I can go see The Avengers as a celebration!

It’s weird what a read-through can turn up. I’m really glad they sent me this round of edits. The thing that jumped out at me on this the 75th read-through–exclamation points. Lots of them! Lots and lots and lots of them! No, really! More than in this paragraph!

As soon as I noticed that there were sometimes three on a page (often in the dialogue of an ardent sumo fan, so I forgave myself just a little) I about croaked and stopped the edit on page 100 or wherever and went back to the start to do a “find and replace.” It was appalling how many “track edits” marks are in the margin with deleted exclamation points.

Why doesn’t someone, a kind beta reader, protect me from myself on things like this? !!!

Anyhow, I’m just thankful I caught it because there’s a chance this could be the final round of edits before it goes to proofreading and then to galleys.

Now, all I’m left with is happiness that it’s done–and that lingering paranoia that there’s another glaring error that I’ve completely been blind to.

(Oh, and on a happy note…my ARCs of Big in Japan arrived in the mail! So happy to hold them in my hot little hand. And I do mean hot. It’s about 99 degrees this afternoon. Whew!)