Editing is Necessary
Hello!
I hope your week went well. Football season has been going on, so Neil and I have been watching lots of football with his family. I bring my books so that I can survive (it’s not my thing, but he loves it). One of our dogs, Maximus, has been licking his legs to the point of causing hair loss and agitated skin, so we are trying to put things on to help him heal (the things we are using were what our vet told us to, I promise). Trying to get him to stop licking is a difficult task, let me tell you.
Work-wise, I have been writing a little bit of my own stuff, but a friend of mine’s manuscript has been in my inbox for way too long (probably about four months… oops). I’m finally getting around to editing it thoroughly for him. As much as people tend to despise editing, it is imperative that we do it. I have a few family members and friends who are great beta readers, giving me helpful feedback. One of the tools I use for editing is Grammarly, a program that helps fix some mistakes and suggest better word choice. While it is not correct 100% of the time, it does catch a lot of things and even gives weekly stat reports of how I have been doing with my word choice, amount of words written, my accuracy, and what kinds of things I most often mess up. I like to utilize all of these options before I even send my manuscript over to my editor. For anyone even considering writing a book, I would highly recommend investing in editing. Yes, you can edit your works yourself, but oftentimes we know what our work is supposed to say, so our brain auto-edits, making us miss the mistakes we made. I have read plenty of books, both traditionally published and self-published, that could have used another round or two of edits. Oftentimes the mistakes are not enough to make me put down the book, but there have been times where they completely pull me out of the story. For those of you who have thought that writing a book is not a big deal… there is a LOT that goes into the process, even more than the editing. For me, it’s worth it because I love being an author—the love of my work outweighs the cumbersome things that come along with it. I wouldn’t want to be anything else.
Hope you have an awesome week!
