A Word about Editors

Since my first book (Jeremiah Stone) has just come out, I’ve been writing and editing like the energizer bunny. In fact I’m in the middle of editing two books while also writing two other books. It’s a bit daunting and maybe a little more than I can handle effectively, but for some reason I can’t help it. And neither can I help the smile I get when someone comments on my book, good or bad.

I’m sure everyone has heard of the phrase Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. Now let me assure you that in my youth everybody’s opinion of me I took to heart and most of the time I was either devastated or angered by it. Since then I’ve grown up and realized I don’t have to take everything someone says so critically, but rather use their opinion as more of an outside view of who I am. Whether I take it as constructive criticism or ignore it completely is up to me. This change of view, however, was harder to accept when it concerned my writing.

Writing is my passion. The ability to express myself in every single one of my characters drives me to discover who I am. It’s a constant learning process which not only reflects on myself and my life, but encourages me to make myself a better person while enhancing my writing style for the better. Since I’ve realized this about myself, I’ve become more accepting of critiques. Therefore I’ve had to change the above commonly-used phrase to the following:

Editors are like assholes, everybody needs one and though you may not like what comes out of it you’re usually better off using it.

With this in mind, I took the 6 points the editor of Jeremiah Stone sent me and entrusted that she knew what she was talking about. From those points, I dove into editing Jeremiah Stone. I initially corrected hundreds of mistakes. And let me tell you I despise editing. Though I felt rushed, overall the story is better for every change that was made. Since then I’ve really tried to apply those same points to the next two novels in the series before I sent them off. Again, both stories are better because of the changes, though I can see dozens more I need to make.

In the beginning I entered into this publishing adventure expecting to learn a little but instead I’ve learned a lot. One of the most valuable lessons so far has been to take my time. Writing doesn’t happen overnight and neither does editing. It’s a process and like writing the more I do it the better I get and the less mistakes I make. Still I have to remember that nobody’s perfect and there is always one more round of editing that can be done. However, it’s my choice to do it.

The other thing I’ve learned is I can’t please everyone. Most of the time I can only be satisfied with my own work and even then there’s someone out there that is bound to say it could be improved in some way. What I do with that information is up to me, but as least I consider their perspective. It doesn’t mean I change everything to suit one person, but rather to suit myself. I’ve learned this through this long arduous process and it’s served me well so far.

While I was learning all this, I was also starting to get feedback on Jeremiah Stone. Of all the feedback I’ve received on my novel, there are overwhelmingly three comments.

            1. The story is great, though its starts off slow.

            2. The sex scenes are either too graphic or distract from the story.

            3. There are a lot of grammatical errors

As for the first one The story is great, though its starts off slow I have to both smile and frown. I say this because I really think the story starts with action and intrigue while only moving at a more intense pace the deeper a person reads into it. Lucky the two people who criticized the beginning are family, and around my household brutal honesty is the norm. After they explained their perspective (neither of them read this genre) I can see what they mean, though I’m not going to change the beginning just yet. To the contrary, I’ve added a few more lines to both the beginning and end to enhance their understanding and hopefully everyone else’s. Granted, Jeremiah Stone is already out in print so I can’t just send the edits out, but eventually I’ll create a 2^nd Edition version with all the corrections.

For item number two The sex scenes are either too graphic or distract from the story I’m not surprised. I originally wrote the story without the scenes, then added them in, then pulled them out again only to put them back before sending it off. Since then it’s been published, yet before I received a single comment on it I’d already edited the story and pulled them out. Of course the precursors to the scenes are still there, but the graphic details are gone. Not only does it seem to read better with them out, but it makes the book appropriate for young-adults, not they’re completely my target audience. What I need to find is the happy balance, so it’s still a work-in-progress

It’s also at this point I realized I need two types of editing for my books, content and grammatical. Most of the time as writers we just want things to flow right and because it’s our story we feel every scene is necessary. In the two books I’m editing now, I’m finding out that’s not the case as whole paragraphs are being ripped out only to discover the story’s better for it. Of course as I’m doing it I’m seeing hours of work going into the trashcan, but it’s not just about me. I write so my voice can be heard and sometimes it means tailoring your work to fit the people. And from everyone I’ve talked too they want the story to grab them and pull them in quickly. If a few pages of deletions and some re-writing is what it take to do that, then I’m game.

The last item concerning grammar is a problem. After all, this is why we have editors, to fix these things before they go into print. Though I’m not blaming anyone for the errors in my book, I have to repeat what I stated in my earlier paragraph (which is how I thought at the time), we are usually to close to the story to pick out the fine details like grammatical problems. Even now, I carefully read a paragraph and think it’s perfect only to look at it a day later and find an error or two. We skim because we know what it says and only a new set of eyes can identify those problems, right? WRONG!!! I was wrong to think I’m too close to the story to find my own errors. For the most part we have the tools to detect most of them ourselves. Here’s why.

I use three laptops and one desktop computer in my writing so I’m constantly shuffling files around between them. More importantly, however, I’m doing most of my work on the oldest of them. In fact, most of my book edits and communications concerning Jeremiah Stone were done from it. This is where my problems began. On that laptop I have MS Word 2000. One my desktop I have MS Word 2003. On my traveling laptop I have MS Word 2007 while my writing laptop next to my bed has MS Word 2010.

Now I remind you I’m working on four things at once now so while I’m transferring these files around between computers I discover something. On the MS Word 2003 computer I did a full grammar check of my next novel and it checked out clean. I since moved that file to my MS Word 2007 machine and decided to look at it again. Immediately the program discovered a grammatical error, so I ran it again for the entire book. To my surprise it found another 100+ errors. Seeing this, I then move the corrected file to my MS Word 2010 laptop. Needless to say it found a couple dozen more issues. Since then I’ve gone back and done a grammar check on Jeremiah Stone. And though it’s not atrocious, the MS Word 2010 checker found a good number of errors which I’ve since corrected.

Now let’s get back to item number three, grammar. Though I’d like to point the blame at someone else, I realize now I need to point a good portion of it at myself. I should’ve recognized newer programs have more features, more options, and improved utilities. Seeing as I’m in the computer industry, I can’t help but to kick myself for my ignorance of this fact. All I can say is it’s not a mistake I’ll make twice. It’s also a good reminder to keep all my software up-to-date. It’s also a reminder that sometimes the simplest of options (a button on a computer program) is often the one most forgotten and least trusted. As I said before, it doesn’t catch all the mistakes, but it’s a good place for any writer or editor to start.

This also means that when I get my next two books back from the editor (Limbus and Azazel) I’m going to spend a lot more time going through each and then hide all the changes and run it through a grammar check one last time. I also plan on printing the ‘final’ copy of the book and going through it once again because my eye catches items on paper far more easily than on the computer screen. Yet, even after all this, after all my checks and edits, after I’ve painstakingly gone over every word with a fine toothed comb, I still want an editor to tell me what’s wrong because there’s nothing better than an honest editor.

There’s one last thing I’d like to say. For everyone who’s picked up Jeremiah Stone and noticed the errors only to complain to me about them, I’d like to say thanks because it’s spurred me to investigate why and how this occurred. And in the end I hope my next book will be better crafted for your reading pleasure.