Have you ever read a book that caused you to pause and say ‘What?’ When you read that sentence, did you wonder why I asked the question?
Well, I asked it because there have been occasions when I have thought or said that very thing. What? Why I said or thought it is because what I just read didn’t make sense. How did this come about?
Poor Editing! Or in some cases because of NO editing at all.
As an author, I write books. However, I started out as a ghostwriter on two websites. Mostly I wrote various articles, but in one case I wrote an entire book about the death of honeybees and what was happening worldwide. As a former beekeeper, this was a topic I had keen interest in, and I did a lot of research to make sure what I wrote was correct.
Eventually, I went out on my own and wrote a stress management book and a number of books about nutrition and superfoods. And, yes, I did my own editing. Back then I thought I did a pretty good job of it. That I will be able to verify when I go back and review every one of those books and hope I’m not disappointed with my editing.
Why could I be disappointed? Because even though I was careful with spelling, etc., I had virtually no training in editing and didn’t realize that there are fine points to putting a manuscript together that I was not familiar with.
Am I disappointed with the books I’ve written so far? No! However, I am in the process of rereading all of my books to see how I can improve them. Editing may be part of that process.
Again, why is editing so important? Does it hurt a book to have a missed word or one that is misspelled? Probably not. Because we are imperfect people, making a mistake occasionally and not catching it are just parts of our imperfections that show up in our or others’ writings. Most readers do not keep a running list of the mistakes in every book or article that they read. However, some do, and their reviews reflect their displeasure. ☹
As a reader, I am forgiving of most mistakes I encounter in whatever I am reading. Since I am indulging just for entertainment, I don’t peruse the book or article deliberately to search out errors. However, if I keep encountering missing words, misspelled words, misspelled names or horrible punctuation, I do eventually get a little irritated 😊 And that is the primary reason why as authors we need to have our manuscripts as clean as possible of mistakes. The last thing we want to do is irritate a reader/reviewer.
Recently I have been working on becoming a preliminary editor, not a final editor. This is especially in regard to my own books. Why? Because I have discovered that it is too easy for me to miss mistakes in my own writings. I catch probably every mistake in most everything else I read but have found that if I am editing my own books, it is way too easy to miss my mistakes. Are you wondering why that is? It’s because our brains correct the mistakes in our heads but do not manage to get the correction to our fingertips so we can actually correct the manuscript. ☹ Rereading and reading aloud does help especially reading out loud because it brings in the additional sense of hearing. That one step will catch most mistakes that are ordinarily missed.
Realizing that is what happens made me glad that I have a final editor for all my romance writings. Bless Kay Springsteen for she catches the mistakes I miss. I endeavor to give her as clean a copy as I can so she can concentrate on plot and plot holes and sentence structure instead of any missing words, etc.
Again, why is good editing a must?
Have you ever been enjoying a book and finish a chapter or section of a story and find, for some reason, that the reading was a little irritating or something felt a little off, but you couldn’t put your finger on WHAT was wrong or unsettling? And you might have found that you were just a little disappointed or not quite as satisfied with it as you thought you should be.
And then there is the book you found with one of the best plots you’ve ever read, but it was poorly executed. How disappointed were you when you discovered that was the problem? Yes, you can do a review and rip the book to pieces OR you can contact the author privately and mention what you liked about the story and what you didn’t like in regard to the editing.
So, is it important to have any of our writings well edited? Yes, I feel that is a definite part of the process of writing anything. I edit everything I write whether books, articles or a text I am sending a friend. I want what I write to be understood and appreciated.
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