It seems it is becoming a regular feature on the Home Page that an author announces in his blog that a new chapter has been submitted and, two days later, another blog post informs us that the chapter has been taken down and the errors are being corrected! An old adage advises that "...the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client." Can that be carried over to "an author who is his own editor...."?
While this can apply to the majority of authors, there are few authors around here that are their own editors and they do a decent job.
I don't have any editors (as you can tell from the quality of my work), but I've found a couple of ways to make my text decent enough that I don't get a 2 for score.
Other than the spellchecker and grammar checker, these days, having your computer read your text out loud for you is available to almost everbody and is a great way to find things that sound odd. Also, the one trick that I do is to read the work sentence by sentence from the end of the story to the beginning. It forces one to focus on the sentence and makes sure you don't have missing words or repeated words or homonyms, and definitely helps with long sentences.
But yes, in general, everybody benefits from a second and third set of eyes to look over the text before posting it for general consumption.
Also, the one trick that I do is to read the work sentence by sentence from the end of the story to the beginning.
I endorse that strategy. My worst howlers have come through skipping that stage.
AJ
There are others sayings at work here: 'There is no such thing as bad publicity' and 'Any publicity is good publicity'. Every announced blog post on the home page puts the author in the spotlight, even if it's just for a few hours. Repeated spotlights cause readers to remember their names. I doubt all blogging authors do this consciously for publicity reasons but it does work well to get their 'brand name' remembered.
To start with you need to figure out why the lawyer is a fool if he represents himself. When you compare that to an author editing their own work, you will find it isn't the same thing.
Yes authors miss things, but so do editors. The more people who look at things, the fewer errors the reader will find.
To start with you need to figure out why the lawyer is a fool if he represents himself. When you compare that to an author editing their own work, you will find it isn't the same thing.
Yes authors miss things, but so do editors. The more people who look at things, the fewer errors the reader will find.
Lawyers who represent other people have also been known to miss things.
I edit my work at the end of each day's work. Then I check it again the start of the next day of writing. I then proof the final manuscript before uploading. I use a couple of different types of software for editing and I still get nits. Lol.
I still see typos in my own work if I look at it twenty years later. I always correct them in the master copy but I despair of ever getting even my first book (1998) perfect.
I still see typos in my own work if I look at it twenty years later.
I pride myself having very few mistakes, both back when I was a programmer and now as an author. (As a programmer, I never had a program have an error once in production. But, then again, I didn't write that many programs having moved into database and then management.)
I'm getting ready to publish a novella and plan to put a few chapters of an existing novel at the end as a preview (marketing, not teaser LOL). The last line in the last preview chapter is: "I think I'll stop by and have a chat with them." Except in the novel on Amazon today, the "I'll" is "I'd".
Yeah, we don't catch everything.
Well, I have had stories go through self-editing and then a real editor and still have errors pointed out by readers.
That said, it's a bit of an insult to the editor to ask him to find errors that a spell checker would.
That said, it's a bit of an insult to the editor to ask him to find errors that a spell checker would.
I agree that an editor should not be asked to find such errors.
One should always use a grimoire as a spell checker.
One should always use a grimoire as a spell checker.
Grimoires have been known to contain booby traps to trip up neophytes and dabblers. You should run your grimoire through a spell checker before attempting to use anything contained there in.