One of the bugbears I have in the writing process is the editing. I'm only too happy to get the story down and head towards my goals within the tales, often I find myself going off on tangents and wondering where they will go but then I'll take the tale back on track. That part is the fun part for me.
What I'm not so keen on is the editing, it's tedious.
Firstly I go through the manuscript obliterating any spelling mistakes.
Secondly I go through it line by line, paragraph by paragraph so that the words flow and make sense, plus taking out any spelling errors I'd missed.
Thirdly I go through it to make sure I haven't made any errors such as going left when i should have gone right.
Then finally I go over it one last time to see all the kinks ironed out.
By the time that's done my eyes are bleeding, my brain is so much zombie mush and I'm growing to hate the thing.
Then I give it a quick read and that's that, It's done and ready for publishing.
I have often wondered if many authors, unable to afford a proofreader, have to go through the same process as I do. Judging by some of the stuff I've read from Indie authors I doubt that they do, not all of them but enough of them. That means that after going through a few pages of badly written text I delete the books from my Kindle. This is the reason why I force myself to go through this tedious part of working on a book, any reader who finds my tales rubbish due to all the mistakes in grammar, syntax and spelling would be fully justified in doing the same thing to my works, deleting them.
I do know of one author who has edited her book to the nth degree, trying to make sure that it is right, it's perfect and it's all that she wants it to be, fine and dandy but she's been doing that for over a year and really, she should be pushing it out there. Such an effort by her to hone her work will probably result in a book that's bland and without any exciting stuff that makes you want to turn the pages. Then again she might be producing another Grapes of Wrath. It may well be that she would get rewarded for all her effort and if not, then all her hard work and dithering was for naught.
This is why I only go through the steps I've outlined above since I want to have the book refreshing and exciting for the reader, doing too much will result in a stagnant work, that's my opinion anyway.
I also know that there are a lot of singleton writers out there, publish one book on the Kindle and sit back to watch the money flow in, they might as well try for a lottery ticket, they'd have the same amount of odds. On the other hand they might find a well of luck and the work becomes a best seller, I won't count on it however!
Thus this is my plan, to write for the next five years (this year being year one) with hopefully at least three books coming out each year.
If after plugging away, marketing and letting people know, plus word of mouth, I don't make any sort of success at the end of that time then perhaps I had better move on to something else. But at least I can honestly say that I've tried, I've given it a go and I will stand or fall by what I've done.
Naturally I will want success but that comes at the price of sheer hard work and with no easy fix. Keep plugging away for those five years and see where I am at the end of it.
Hopefully by the end of that time I will be adding to this blog from my holiday home in Norway :-)
What I'm not so keen on is the editing, it's tedious.
Firstly I go through the manuscript obliterating any spelling mistakes.
Secondly I go through it line by line, paragraph by paragraph so that the words flow and make sense, plus taking out any spelling errors I'd missed.
Thirdly I go through it to make sure I haven't made any errors such as going left when i should have gone right.
Then finally I go over it one last time to see all the kinks ironed out.
By the time that's done my eyes are bleeding, my brain is so much zombie mush and I'm growing to hate the thing.
Then I give it a quick read and that's that, It's done and ready for publishing.
I have often wondered if many authors, unable to afford a proofreader, have to go through the same process as I do. Judging by some of the stuff I've read from Indie authors I doubt that they do, not all of them but enough of them. That means that after going through a few pages of badly written text I delete the books from my Kindle. This is the reason why I force myself to go through this tedious part of working on a book, any reader who finds my tales rubbish due to all the mistakes in grammar, syntax and spelling would be fully justified in doing the same thing to my works, deleting them.
I do know of one author who has edited her book to the nth degree, trying to make sure that it is right, it's perfect and it's all that she wants it to be, fine and dandy but she's been doing that for over a year and really, she should be pushing it out there. Such an effort by her to hone her work will probably result in a book that's bland and without any exciting stuff that makes you want to turn the pages. Then again she might be producing another Grapes of Wrath. It may well be that she would get rewarded for all her effort and if not, then all her hard work and dithering was for naught.
This is why I only go through the steps I've outlined above since I want to have the book refreshing and exciting for the reader, doing too much will result in a stagnant work, that's my opinion anyway.
I also know that there are a lot of singleton writers out there, publish one book on the Kindle and sit back to watch the money flow in, they might as well try for a lottery ticket, they'd have the same amount of odds. On the other hand they might find a well of luck and the work becomes a best seller, I won't count on it however!
Thus this is my plan, to write for the next five years (this year being year one) with hopefully at least three books coming out each year.
If after plugging away, marketing and letting people know, plus word of mouth, I don't make any sort of success at the end of that time then perhaps I had better move on to something else. But at least I can honestly say that I've tried, I've given it a go and I will stand or fall by what I've done.
Naturally I will want success but that comes at the price of sheer hard work and with no easy fix. Keep plugging away for those five years and see where I am at the end of it.
Hopefully by the end of that time I will be adding to this blog from my holiday home in Norway :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment