Shanghailanders in 83 Words

The poetry of indices

I have finished copyedits on my novel. I am done with edits. What a surreal state. Back in February, when I sold the book, this moment felt so far away, and abstract. Now the manuscript is moving beyond a digital Word document into various printed and bound forms, metamorphosing physically into a hardcover book. It’s making its way into early readers’ hands. Publication date is May 7, 2024.

My copyeditor, Anne Horowitz, was an absolute dream to work with. She caught so much and has made my prose so much cleaner. Aside from incredibly in-depth edits and comments, she also sent me a spreadsheet that tracked each main character’s age and situation over 22 years’ time - month by month.

And in addition to all of that, much to my surprise and pleasure, she sent over a style guide. At the end of the style guide, Anne included an index of variant spellings and capitalizations - basically, an alphabetized list of terms, proper nouns, foreign spellings, etc. that are found in my book.

What a thrilling, jarring sense of defamiliarization, in seeing my book transfigured into 26 units of poetic inventory. Yes, these little listicles were the essence of my story. In reading them, one could glean quite a lot about the places and particulars of its world. I loved them.

So without further ado, I am happy to share a few of my favorite of these indices with you. Thank you, again, Anne.

This collage of images, things, places, ideas is where I’ve been living and working for the past three years. To me, they resonate with so much meaning and emotion. I’m sure that these lists are gibberish to you. But maybe one day you will read my novel and they will be re-illuminated in reverse; you may understand how it all fits together.