Melvin Rivers's Blog: The Aspiring Author - Posts Tagged "editing"

Reading books from my favorite authors through the years, I had a silly notion that I can write books too. Hey, if they can write books, so can I. So, I put pen to paper and started to write. Needless to say the words I put to paper weren't the best writing in the world. But it was a start. After years of doing this, I had another silly notion. Maybe I can publish my work. I sent in pieces to magazines to only be rejected. Years later, the self publishing industry took off. I spent hours every day writing a book. Soon the book was published. Boy, the reviews were terrible. I didn't have a clue about the self publishing process. To have even a little success, I needed editors, proofreaders, critiques, and beta readers. With a limited budget, I couldn't afford half of those things. I tried self editing and proofreading. The same results. Bad reviews. As of today, I took two of my books off the market and getting them professionally edited and proofread. The other book is in the process of getting proofread and should be ready in another week or two. Years ago when I first decided to become a writer, I thought writing was all there was. Now I know writing is only the beginning. I'm sure other writers found out the hard way too.

Stephen King wrote in his book "On Writing" that taking writing classes are a waste of time. Basically to become a good writer you must read and write a lot. Before I'd read those words from Stephen King, I enrolled in an online writing class. After shelving out a decent amount of money, I was sent study guides and assignments. (Things I could've got more cheaper by doing internet searches) Each time a new assignment arrived, I sat at my desk going through each one with great vigor. After completing them, I sent them to my instructor for grading, and went on to the next one. This continued for months. Finally, the course was complete. I was ready for the writing world. For the next six or seven months I started my first novel. Eventually it was published. Afterwards I received reviews and feedback. I mainly received 3 and 4 star reviews, and the feedback was the same. The story was okay, but the dialogue was stilted and the characters weren't fully developed. Therefore, I took the book off market to make the necessary changes. When I look back, the writing school couldn't make me a better character-driven writer. Of course the school offered ideas, but overall didn't make for better writing in my opinion.
My question is do you believe taking writing courses will make you a better writer or is it a waste of time and money?

The other day I uploaded one of my books on amazon and looked through it. I noticed typos and spelling errors. Immediately I took the book off amazon and sent it to a professional proofreader. I then asked myself why do typos and errors always pop up once my books are published? I always go through them line by line reading each word from front to back and never find errors until after the book has been published. To help ease my mind, I think about all the commercial successful authors who revise and edit their stories many times only to find typos. But I feel kinda depressed again when I think about the editing teams they have at their disposal. I, on the other hand don't have such luxury. Therefore, a starving writer like myself have to shelve out a bit of cash to get my books edited and proofread. In the end everything is worth it. If you are a self-published or new author, I suggest you to leave the editing to the pros after you have went through the manuscript yourself checking for errors. The money you spend may be well worth it in the long run.

Writing a book of any kind is the easy part. All you have to do is spend a certain amount of time putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboards, revise, rewrite, seek beta readers, and send the finished product to an editor. Marketing the final product is a little more difficult in my humble opinion. I have tried almost every marketing venue for an indie author. I went the social media route. I plugged my book to potential buyers and bought ads hoping to attract more buyers. Guess what? The sales were anemic. After spending what seem like an eternity on social media trying to sell the book, I turned my attention to blogs, free press release services, Paid and free websites in another attempt to rack up sales. The result: Weak sales (If any at all). I printed out a bunch of business-size cards advertising the book and left them around different places, and made flyers and did the same. Again, the sales were non-existent. Therefore, I decided to do everything at once. I advertised on social media, posted on blogs, sent out press releases; put ads on websites all over the place, and distributed business cards and flyers. Still I saw the same results. As time went on, I figured out something, I was now a weaker writer. Instead of reading books in the genre in which I write to help improve my skills, and writing everyday, I was trying to market. As a writer, there should be a fine line. You should read and write everyday to become better and someday the marketing may payoff.