Dear Readers,
Holly Hart was kind enough to edit my submissions after they were posted. I learned a valuable lesson. I missed hundreds of very basic errors and typos. Self editing is like being your own lawyer. The editor is incompetent. Anyway, I have just spent the better part of two hours reposting this story. I did not Italicise the thought quotes and left out some of the beautification; however, due to Holly's efforts, the story reads a bit better than it did before. If you haven't read it yet, you might enjoy it. I will probably go back and fix some other things later.
I am actually working on another sequel; however, it will probably be summer before it is even close to being ready. A SRU sequel may be coming sooner.
Holly also edited the sequels and I will update those as time allows.
Thank you Holly!
Portia Bennett
Comments
It's generally MUCH easier...
to see the little problems, in someone ELSE's work. With your own, you tend to see what you MEANT to write, as opposed to what you actually wrote. My personal experience, is that if I can leave at least a week between the time I wrote a chapter, and when I try to edit it, I catch FAR more of my own mistakes. I also find it easier to see poor wording choices and such.
I strongly recommend a delay between sending our deathless prose to our editor... And, doing a second, or even third or more, self edit. Another thing I've noticed, doing it this way - for my edited work - is that I (& my editors apparently) am finding fewer simple mistakes in what I send out. This is not to say I don't get piles of suggestions from them, just that it LOOKS like they are able to spend more time looking at WHAT I'm saying and less on the mechanical oopsies.
Thanks to ALL of the editors and proofers out there.
Annette
That's why I send my stories our for someone else to look at
I do not catch everything in the stuff I edit, and miss even more in my own writing.
As Annette said, it is easy when looking at your own stuff to miss things because your mind sees what it thought it wrote, rather than what was written.
So a re-read after several days or having one or more people look at a story will help a lot.
I edit several stories that have 3 or 4 people look at it besides the actual author.
The tricky part can be when one actually changed a bit of wording, to stay in the author's original style, and not change the context.
Another place an editor can help is in questioning what looks like a mistake, or in questioning something that is not clear to the editor, as chances are the average reader will also question it.
But for all editors and potential editors, do not insist your changes to the author's hard work must be changed your way, and 'fess up to your own mistakes and misreadings.
You and I are fallible, too, and two editors will not always catch the same things, or agree on everything. That's life ...
It’s not given to anyone to have no regrets; only to decide, through the choices we make, which regrets we’ll have,
David Weber – In Fury Born
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
An Old Newspaper Trick...
...is to read the page upside down, which is admittedly harder with computers than it is with paper. With practice, it's fairly easy to do, but takes a *long* time to become so familiar that one doesn't notice misspelled words, transpositions, and missing or added words, all common typos.
And of course with computers you can have the words read to you, which is a big help as well. Their accent may be a bit much to take, but they never miss saying what's actually there rather than what you'd hoped was there. Many misspellings generate identifiable mispronunciations as well, so it's a very good tool that *also* gives one a *rough* idea of what your dialogue actually sounds like.
For hundreds of thousands of years, every story was told by a speaker to an audience, and it's only in the last century (or fewer years in many regions) that we've seen stories written down. If it doesn't sound good read aloud, it probably won't connect well with our primitive brains, which still expect someone "out there" speaking.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-----------------
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was. Lovers don't finally
meet somewhere. They're in each
other all along.
--- Jalal ad-Din Rumi
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Homonyms
Read the page upside down. You know, I tried that once, but at three hundred pounds plus, it only gave me a headache. lol. Sorry, I couldn't resist that. Seriously, one of my pet peeves is misused homonyms. I don't know if it's something regional or people just don't see a difference between 'to, too, and two' or 'no and know' or using 'of' for 'off', or 'than', 'then' and 'that', or 'there' and 'their'.
Forgive me, with four years of college and a B.A., I should know better, or is that/than no/know better? I think I have a compulsive disorder complementing my bipolar disorder.
I am a grain of sand on a near beach; a nova in the sky, distant and long.
In my footprints wash the sea; from my hands flow our universe.
Fact and fiction sing a legendary song.
Trickster/Creator are its divine verse.
--Old Man CoyotePuma
I am a grain of sand on a near beach; a nova in the sky, distant and long.
In my footprints wash the sea; from my hands flow our universe.
Fact and fiction sing a legendary song.
Trickster/Creator are its divine verse.
--Old Man CoyotePuma