The Writer's Journey

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                                                               The Writers Journey


I know, I've said it before, but EDITING your work is very important. You may think it is perfect. You may think the wonderful words you have put down are so great that nothing could ever be wrong. Well ...I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are wrong. You will miss things. You will make mistakes. This is why it is great to be a member of a local writers' group. You need other eyes on your manuscript.

Please, for the love of every reader out there, EDIT your darlings before you publish.

I've mentioned before how one of the biggest mistakes I found in a SELF-PUBLISHED book was where a character's name was one thing on one page and then, when you turned to the next page, it became something else. Recently, I picked up another self-published book. The title was intriguing. The cover was interesting. It was a dark, wooded scene, and this was when I realized it was self-published. It's a dark cover. The TITLE was in black letters. I could barely read it. The BLURB on the back was in script in dark letters, and I could not read a single thing. It blended in. I opened the book. Sure enough, no publishing house was mentioned. The author did not double-space unless it was between paragraphs. This is a surefire sign of an amateur. The book started off in script format. This is fine, as long as you use a script format that can be read. The book was written in journal format. Which again would have been fine IF I had known who was writing the journal. I read one page and put the book down. 

Edit. Please, for the love of all readers out there, EDIT.

And I'm not perfect. Okay. Case in point, I went through Secrets Cafe, Just Desserts about eight times before I finally sent it in to my publisher. The editor went through it and sent it back to me to clean up the grammar (I'm not good with commas), the ellipses (...), and the page breaks. Plus a few others. I started going through the book and suddenly I noticed a major issue. I had two characters, Elan and Jess, having a friend over on Christmas, while they are also at a Christmas party with Georgia. OMG! What the freak! How could I have missed that? And how could I fix it? 

This is why editing is essential. It is, in fact, one of the most important aspects of writing. No one is perfect. No story is perfect. You need to clean it up. You need to review it carefully with a fine-tooth comb to identify any issues. 

I am grateful that I caught the issue before the book went to final publication. Thank the muse that I saw it. I was able to correct it. Hooray. But even I know that I am not perfect. There may still be mistakes.

 So, for the love of every reader out there, EDIT. We appreciate it.



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