Well, I am back . . . to a degree, but not 100%. Recuperation may be several months and may require surgery at some point, so it is just a waiting game for a while.
In the meantime, I’m working to, at least, get back into the swing of things—to a degree—if that is possible. Only time will tell.
What I have been doing is catching up on my reading. I’ve probably gone through close to a book per day for the last two months. Yes, all Pride and Prejudice Variations. There are bunches of new authors and new P&P’s on Amazon, and most are entertaining, and a good many are excellent variations. For the most part, I’ve read all I’ve started with the exception of a couple which did not catch my interest. Wasn’t the subject, but the way they were written just didn’t do the job. Eventually, I will try them again . . . just not right now.
For the most part, the majority of the books are well written and well edited as far as misspellings. However, there were a number of books that did have missing words, sometimes in numerous places.
All this begs the question ‘Why is editing so important’? I don’t know about you, but when I’m reading and I come across misspellings, missing words, or really rotten punctuation, it throws me out of the flow of the book. I wind up kind of shaking myself like a dog that was dumped in a pond and crawled up on shore and is trying to dry off before I start reading again. I’m also a tad aggravated that it happened as well.
Does poor editing take away some of the pleasure of a particular book’s story? Yes, it can.
So, even though I am a preliminary editor for my stories and other’s books, I also have a final editor to make my books as error free as possible. Part of what I have found that helps is to read at least part of each book aloud. Usually this is done when I am correcting certain passages and helps to ensure that they are as close to 100% error free as possible.
Why read aloud as an author? Did you know that your brain will make corrections but not let you know the manuscript needs to be corrected? I guarantee it will. When you read aloud, you bring in another sense: the sense of hearing which will catch about 99% of mistakes.
Although no book is 100% error free, I have had a couple of times that I received a pat on the back because of my editing. That’s why, since I’m not Jane Austen, I do my best not to give my reviewers a sword to hack my books to pieces for bad editing.
Unfortunately for authors, Amazon is allowing ratings with no reviews (like Goodreads which is also owned by Amazon). As authors, that is no help at all because we have no idea WHY the rater gave a book a 3, 2, or 1 star rating. I’ve been tempted to petition Amazon to make those who give crummy ratings do a review so authors know what they need to correct in particular books and what to look for in the future. However, knowing Amazon and how unwilling they are to be reasonable in connection with book reviews, I feel it will probably be a losing battle.
You might ask: Do I write reviews? Occasionally I do. However, unless I am able to give a 4 or 5 stars to an author’s book, I do not. I am loathe to give less than 4 stars because of how it can ruin an author’s rating. It takes several 5 stars to bring up a 3 or less rating. I also refuse to do spoilers.
I have also done reviews that Amazon refused, then I turned around and resubmitted the exact same review and it was accepted. Please explain that.
How about you? When you come across bad editing, how do you feel or react? Are you still willing to give a fairly good review in spite of numerous editing errors? Please let me know in your comments below.
BTW, I am reading this post aloud and hope I find all errors before it goes up. 🙂
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