Before and After

Before deadline:

After deadline:

Yes, the Mockingbird manuscript is in. And it’s in, I might add, without the following embarrassing typos, which I spotted while editing:

• that the break to his arm left Jem’s “thumb parallel to his thing.” True (since it was also parallel to his thigh) but perhaps a little indelicate.

• that lawyers’ analyses of the novel have to be “sued carefully.” Curse you, inappropriately apt verb.

• that the lives of African Americans in the Deep South were marked by “sheet terror.” That, I’ll go out on a limb to say, may be the most tasteless typo ever committed to a document.