Forum: Author Hangout

Sigh.
My previous bulk Editor vanished. my current finsihed editor takes a week per chapter. it seems that he has a real life, daft bugger.

I went looking through the Editor availability secion of SoL and found lots of 'stuff'.

There was even someone that posted an add for his services back in 2009, 11 years ago and he was over 70 then...

Completely discriminating against the 80+ age group, more than a few were born during WWII..

While liking Al Stiner is fine and dandy, does that mean you have a good understanding of english??

And while having an Armed forces DI on your resume is fine for some, most of my needs come in the advanced English punctuation categories. Such as where the hell the comma is supposed to go.
that along with complex compound sentences which confuse me all too often need oversight.

half of the page was taken up by 4 or less hours a week availability.
I'm sitting on 4 stories totaling over 300k words...
3 hours a week isnt going to cut it.
I think.

I think that the voulnteer Editor section needs a date of posting when they advertise their services. somehow, I felt that quite a few were dated.

Shad

I don't claim to be an editor...an editor should be able to make suggestions to improve your writing or story while I can't improve the ones I've started past readable. Proof reading I can do, and I would be happy to offer my services, but working 70 to 80 hours a week severely limits my time, so I don't offer.

Maybe one day if I can ever retire.

I have also had no luck finding a volunteer editor. I've been using Grammarly instead.

Grammarly has a free option that fits my budget. The paid option does more, but I'm more than happy with what it does for free. Grammarly interfaces nicely with MS Word. (I got a bit confused until I started exiting Grammarly before exiting Word.)

Grammarly (at least in the free version) has no way to distinguish between 'May' being a month and a family name. When Z and Fran manage the May's house as a vacation rental. Grammarly gets confused.

I remember a few singular and plural issues where Grammarly did not understand which word(s) or phrase set the number. Grammarly did not fix my spelling out loud of computer opcodes like X-O-R.

From Generous Offers (2) Mike's ladies are deciding how to wear a 'panty' which was little more than loincloths front and back. They had the option of connecting the front and back parts with a loose chain. I wrote:

Beth and Chrissy tried it both ways opting for no connection. 'Inadvertent' exposure when they moved was desired.

Grammarly wanted: …no connection. 'Inadvertent' exposure, when they moved, as desired.

I ignored both the comma and word change suggestions.

Beth and Chrissy wore the panties with equally sexy tops in the cruise line's pre-boarding lounge. They were among several others competing for the sexiest outfit.

Judging was by audience noise level.

Grammarly wanted the audience. Suggestion ignored.

I'm down as a volunteer editor, but some authors need more editing than others. Also, there's a big difference between an editor who is willing to help you rewrite your whole story and a proof reader who can pick up on spelling, grammar and punctiation mistakes.

Some of the work I've done in the past, you sometimes miss something because chapters are drip fed by the author, and it's only when you go back and re-read the whole thing do you notice a complete plot hole that you can drive a bus through.

I will second what karactr mentioned. When I first offered my services, I used to be able to dedicate about 10 hours a week to editing, but these days I'm lucky if I get time to myself to read, let alone edit. If I spot obvious errors and the author has contact information, I'll send it along, but I don't have the time to work with the number of editors I used to.

Finally in reply to Eddie Davison, why don't you create a free account that you use for SOL only? That way you don't need to use your private address. If you're trying to send 300k of text for editing, an attachment to an email is a hell of a lot easier than using the SOL mail system (no offense Laz).