Proofreading is arduous. Proofreading is difficult and tedious. Proofreading is nerve-racking and no fun at all. And it’s a necessity.
We all use the spell-check and grammar-check, (at least I hope so), but there are many things that those handy features won’t catch, such as homophones (every writer’s sworn enemy), misspellings that are actual words, and missing words like a and the. This last error can make you sound like Boris Badanov. Only careful rereading will catch any of these.
I’ve been a member of an on-line writer’s workshop for three years, and I’ve noticed something that might sound weird: It’s easier to spot other people’s errors than it is your own. That’s because your eyes start seeing what your fingers intended to type, but didn’t. I’m not harsh to people who don’t catch all the typos, because I know that I’ve probably missed a few in my own stories. If you have the money, spend it on a professional proofreader. This isn’t cheap; most SPAs are on their own.
I read an editor’s site once; she offered a proofreading quiz to anyone who was interested in being an editor. The qualifying score was 100%. If this sounds a bit hard-nosed, think for a second. Let’s say that the allowed score was 98%, or two errors out of a hundred. In a 95,000 word manuscript (the length of my own two completed books) 2% is nineteen-hundred. That’s a lot of mistakes.
So we get to work, reading carefully, concentrating strictly on the words, ignoring their meaning and the story we’re telling with them. Teh for the, form for from, though for thought. It’s numbing. In the end, you hope you’ve caught everything. I thought I had caught everything with The Bretton Katt Alliance; it turns out that I missed a few (a corrected edition will be out in a couple of months). Trust me, nothing makes the stomach roil and the sweat break out like the discovery of post-publication errors. We love our books, and we want to do right by them. It’s only fair to readers, and to ourselves, that we put out the best possible product. (But I can do without reviewers whose snide comments imply that you didn't proofread at all).
That said, I don’t understand why some people are more judgmental of SPAs than they are of more famous, best-selling writers. One post on an Amazon board even said that best-selling authors had ‘earned the right’ to be sloppy. With the money that some of these people get, you’d think readers would hold them to the highest standard. Nobody has the right to be sloppy.
In the past few years I’ve seen errors in books by some major writers (I won’t mention names), mistakes that somebody on the proofreading staff should have caught and fixed. But proofreaders, like self-published authors who must do their own proofing, are only human beings, and human beings aren’t perfect. We must keep some perspective. We’re not surgeons; errors are annoying, even unprofessional, but no one will die because of an error in a novel (at least I hope not).
So once more we open the file, and begin, line by line, until our eyes get tired and we must stop for now. We find another two or three mistakes that we missed the other day. We fix them and close the file. And tomorrow we’ll do it again.
Yesterday I spent four miserable hours trying to upload The Bretton Katt Alliance to the Kindle format. First it just plain wouldn't take, then it was full of bobbles that called for correction. Oy. Well, it finally told me it was done, and that the book should be available to readers 'in 12 to 72' hours. That's a long window. Amazon never did explain why it might take up to three days.
Hopefully, it's done, and people will be able to download it to their little gadgets. If not, it's back to the drawing board.
I still have mixed feelings about this. How well will it sell? Will Amazon pull anything with that less-than-above-board contract? Does this really mean anything for the future of books and publishing, or is it just another momentary fad?
Later this week I will be uploading the text of The Bretton Katt Alliance into the Kindle format. I know, a mere ten weeks ago I said I had no plans to do this. So, what changed my mind? A couple of things, mainly.
It's a market. In several on-line forums, readers have said that these days they're buying nothing but Kindle books (I hope that no security scare precipitates a seizure of all electronics from all passengers, etc). I don't know if they'll buy my book or not, but if it isn't on Kindle, they won't. I don't think I'm particularly greedy, but I do want people to read my book!
Curiosity. I would like to see how buyers respond to a Kindle edition. Just how big a market is this? Probably not as big as Amazon claims. It costs me nothing, after all. Okay, I admit: there's the desire not to be left behind. Like it or not, some format of the electronic book is here to stay. Writers must adapt. I'm not that much of a Luddite.
I still have some reservations. I still don't trust Amazon as far as I could throw an elephant. But for right now, going with the Kindle looks like the right thing to do. If it turns out to be a bad decision, well, we can only fall back and try something else. We get nowhere by settling into ruts, even comfortable ruts.
So, look for The Bretton Katt Alliance, coming to a Kindle near you (I hope) by this weekend.
I wish I could count the number of times well-meaning people (well, mostly well-meaning) have done the following:
Handed me a magazine or newspaper article about how few writers actually make a living at writing.
Smiled patronizingly and gushed "Oh, that’s so noble! Especially when it’s so hard to make a living at it!"
Shaken their heads and said "There’s so many books out there. I've never met any writers. What makes you think you’re any good?"
I get this last from people who’ve never read a thing I’ve written. Their thinking seems to run thusly: Writers are serious, lofty types who don’t live anywhere around here. No one really knows them, except other lofty people who don’t live around here. You live around here, therefore, you can’t be a writer.
The Bretton Katt Alliance has been out for nearly a year now. I must confess it’s not exactly burning up any sales records, either for self-published books or books put out by major houses. I sell a copy this week, two the next. But the response from those few readers has been positive; they ask about the sequel, which gives me some small incentive to keep writing. The small incentive is important, because without it I might feel the urge to stop writing. And no writer can do that, whether you sell ten copies of your book or ten million.
Nobody writes to get rich, or even to pay the bills. (Dr. Johnson was in jest). It’s probably easier to bag a rich spouse-an option not open to me. People who write seriously do it because they can’t stop.
A few years ago, I was foolish enough to listen to people who kept hammering away at me about the pitfalls of the writing life. At that point most of the Lorrondons’ history was still in my head or in very jumbled notes. So I stopped writing and took a course in office management through the local community college. It was a good course, and I did learn some things-no schooling is ever wasted. But in trying to remake myself into something I wasn’t, I triggered a depressive episode that lasted for four years. It wasn’t until I began writing again that I finally pulled out of it. In another year I had the first complete draft of The Bretton Katt Alliance. Now I have the third book in the series close to completion.
I can no more stop writing than I can stop breathing. Writers always give this answer because it’s the only answer we can give. There is no scientific or practical explanation. By some weird cosmic joke, it’s just who we are.
