A Very Rough Draft

Now that my book is in, I'd like to write up some of the great article ideas I had to put off during all that manuscript preparation. Today I sat down to pound out the first one. Boy, it's awful. It's almost embarrassing. But now I have a draft, something I can rethink and revise until I get it right. A bad first draft is the necessary first step towards a brilliant finished product.

Awkward?

I'm also checking over some of the new wording and thinking "Boy, that's awkward." Then I realize it's not the copy editor's writing, it's my own!

copy editing questions

I just got back the copy edited version of my book and am supposed to look over all the changes. The copy editor has made a lot of great catches, but also changed all singular usages of candies that end in s to "an M&M's candy" etc. Can you really not refer to a singular M&M or Skittle? Must do some detective work.