Sunday, May 22, 2016

Am I editing wrong?

Via The Passive Voice, and interesting article about Indie Publishing [that's you, Will]:

In the past few months I learned a very important lesson about the best way to revise your novel.
Don’t.
It’s a waste of time and energy. Not only don’t readers mind too much, they’ll still buy your books.
Grammar errors, spelling errors, sentences tangled like the earbud cords in your pocket: Not a problem.
Put it out. Rake in the bucks.

Here I am, going through Castro's Folly with a fine toothed comb [is that what you call it?-ed] before I even get it to my bevy of proofers, and then this guy comes a long and says, fuck all that, yo.

I have seven novels in print with numbers eight and nine on the way and I'm still banging my head against the wall trying to get the typos out. Are there a lot of them? No. But say 10 or 15 slip through and it drives me bonkers. It's not like I rush things. I have two proofers and then a well paid[you think so do ya mate?-ED] editor. One of my books had an expensive Amazon editor, and I, me, found a dozen typos she let through.

The author's right about one thing. My best seller ever, Israel Strikes went out with a ton of typos. I tracked it down to mistake, the wrong MS got uploaded, and not by me. The problem has since been remedied.

Honestly the editing is the worst part. I find myself bored reading the same scene for the 10th time on the off chance there's a typo. My eyes glaze over. I get distracted looking up stats on baseball reference or putzing around on FB.

Maybe I should pull a Harold Robbins? [You think you have that kind of clout, do you?-ed]

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