Don’t Put Out Junk (or The Importance of Editing Your Work)

Don’t Put Out Junk (or The Importance of Editing Your Work)

Posted January 22, 2013 by Mark Hamner

When I think about parts of my writing experience that may be helpful to a new writer, just starting out, the thing I keep coming back to is the importance of editing. This is a lesson I had to learn, like so many in life, the hard way.

When I decided to self-publish Echo’s Remnant, I found myself very excited about the possibilities. People will be reading my work! It will be out there for the world to see! I may have been so excited, in fact, that I moved a bit too fast.

Before you can say “Mark didn’t proof-read enough,” my book was out there on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, ready to be picked up and read. I was absolutely thrilled. As expected, the first people to read my debut work were my close friends and family. Then others started to read. Reviews – good reviews! – started appearing on Amazon and B&N. 5 stars! 4 1/2 stars! Yay!

Then a funny thing started happening. I began getting messages from my close friends telling me how much they liked the books. Being that several of them are English or Lit majors, however, some of the messages went something like this: “Mark – Great book! I really loved the characters! A few typos, but nothing serious. Good job!” My heart sank. A few typos? Gah! I had read through my book when it was still in Word format, and corrected any typos I saw – one time. Turns out, as many of you know, that’s not nearly enough – not even close. I had to fix this. My book was out, but if I fixed it quick, then most people would get a clean copy.

So I went to work. I sat down with the Kindle version of my book and an open Note (the “Notes” app) on my iPad. I read through the entire book again and I was, I have to admit, shocked by the number of silly mistakes I found. Every time I found an error, I noted it on my Note. I found this was better than trying to read through the Word doc again and make corrections as I went, because this allowed me to put myself in a reader’s shoes. When I finished my read through, I went back and corrected all of the errors I found, using my giant iPad Note as my guide.

More troubling than my typos, misspellings, and grammatical issues was an actual timeline error I found in my last chapter. The last chapter of Echo’s Remnant is in the form of a journal. At one point in the journal, the writer states that he was “tortured for three days” after he came forward. Well, problem was, the previous entry was one day prior, and he was still debating whether to come forward. So where did he find time between yesterday and today to be tortured for three days? Ugh!

And just when I thought I was finally done, that I finally had a quality product, my wife came to me and said, “You know, Mark, a coup is a military takeover. A coupe, however, is a two-door car.” Yikes! I had referenced the antagonist taking over in a coupe in the journal chapter. Images of him riding into town in an armored Honda Civic 2-door came to mind. Embarrassed, I fixed that quickly.

I’m happy to say that, though I’m embarrassed by the quality issues with the first draft of my first book, I learned a lot. I was able to get all the typos corrected before the print version became available, and I sent updates via Kindle and Nook to those who had purchased the less-than-ideal version.

When I finished my second book, Empire’s Rise, I took extra care to make SURE there were no typos, misspellings, etc. I published the book to paperback via CreateSpace, then went through my Draft copy with a red pen, marking an problems, which I then went back and corrected. I did multiple read-throughs, looking for grammatical errors, continuity errors, etc. I found a doosey of a continuity error near the beginning of the book. Often, when I’m writing, I’ll come up with a plot point that needs to be set up earlier in the book. So I’ll go back and add in context and set-up in earlier chapters. While I like this process, you can get yourself into trouble from a continuity standpoint with this. The big error I found was that, early on, one my characters says, (Empire’s Rise Spoiler Alert!) “If I die, I want to be buried, like Hayden.” Well….the problem was, at that point in the story, we had not even MET Hayden, much less had her killed, much less buried her. Oops!

I’m happy to say that I was able to take the hard lessons learned from that first draft of Echo’s Remnant and apply them to Empire’s Rise, ensuring that its first release was a quality release. I owe that to my readers – I believe all authors do.

I should say a word here about professional editing services. I think these are a GREAT idea, and I fully support using them. My problem is I didn’t have the money at the time to use one of these, but I wish I did.

I think all authors can benefit from several full read-throughs of our work before releasing it to the public. Getting close, trusted friends to read your books and let you know about any mistakes can help as well. There is so much competition out there for readers’ attention. I think a lot of readers will tire of a book filled with typos and grammatical errors, and may pass up your book in favor of one with higher quality.

So edit, edit, edit! Our ideas are worth the time!

Mark