“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make
a difference in our lives.” JFK
"In some families, please is described as the magic word. In
our house, however, it was sorry."
~Margaret Laurence
Hi All,
I have to say it…the past eighteen months have been nothing short of
amazing.
I was
thrilled to release my three, romantic suspense novels DEADLY SHADOWS, ONE STEP CLOSER and BE STILL MY BREATH. And now
my new book, NOW YOU SEE ME, just came out and I’m excited for you to read
it!
I’m so grateful to all the readers who embraced each of the books and
was wonderfully overwhelmed with the positive and encouraging reviews. THANK
YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!
I’m
excited to keep sharing with you stories that are filled with page turning
suspense and sizzling romance. Be sure
to stay tuned because I’m already well into my next story…NEVER LET ME
GO.
But now it’s time for me to mend some fences…
The past year
and a half was a bit of a frenzy writing and finishing all three of my current
titles. Suffice to say, in the days and
weeks leading up to each release I was a bit of a wreck about
everything…
The development of the characters…
The
pacing of the intro…
Marketing…marketing…marketing…Goodreads giveaways,
Kindle count down deals...Setting
up a Facebook page...Setting
up a website…a blog…
I’m sure
most self published authors would
agree…it’s all part of the amazing and absolutely chaotic process of
e-publishing
But
here’s the thing… in the rush and the chaos of it all I didn’t give enough time
and care to one critical element…
Editing.
Don’t get
me wrong…I got a lot great reviews from readers about how fun and romantic the
stories were and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that
feedback.
But I
also got review bombed on the editing piece.
And though it stung, I really do appreciate those readers who took the
time to share their thoughts and critiques.
So please
let me just say…I am sorry. Very
sorry.
And rest
assured I heard you.
As I got
ready for the release of my new book NOW YOU SEE ME, I worked much harder this
turn around on the editing…including making sure words aren't dropped or misspelled, having was a stronger
editing eye to catch missing commas and quotation marks…the works.
Is it be perfect? Close to perfect? That’s my goal because because here’s the bottomline...Quality matters.
Everytime.
So from this point on they’ll be more effort…more time…and more resources devoted to editing.
Which is
why I finally realized I need help.
And yes I'll still do a number of revision and edit reviews on my own, but now I’m also handing off those drafts to
some great outside professional folks to help with the
process.
So here
are the big questions…how did it all go so wrong? How could I miss so
much?
I knew I didn't want to continue down this path – my readers deserve better - so I did a
little research and apparently the problem in my whole editing equation started
and ended with me, myself and I.
What I
found out is that when it comes to editing, writers are their own worst
enemy.
It has to
do with the fact that since we know what we want to say, and if the sentence
seems clear enough, we actually can’t pick up the mistakes in the sentence or
paragraph.
That’s
because the brain skews what we perceive as wrong words inside sentences by
doing an auto-correct as we’re reading through the
lines.
Simply
put, the brain actually makes it hard for us to see the
mistake.
Here’s
how John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun explains it…
"...experienced
readers, the very people you would imagine to be effective at editing, are not
necessarily reliable. Experienced readers recognize patterns. They recognize
patterns of letters arranged in words. They recognize syntactical patterns. They
recognize stock phrases and standard figures of speech. And so the brain tells
them that they see the patterns they expect to find. The brain auto-corrects,
not worrying about, for example, transposed letters, because it recognizes the
shape of the whole word…
This
whole auto correct issue? Well it got me
thinking…what else has my brain been auto correcting? Bad decorating choices? Bad outfits, bad haircuts? (We’ll leave all
that for another day and maybe another blog.)
Suffice
to say the e-publishing world is a challenge.
We’re
writers, editors, book cover designers, promoters – and it all gets a bit
crazy.
But I
also believe think e-publishing is perfect for any of us busy folks who has a
great story to tell – folks who are used to lives filled with one big mash up of
multi-tasking events.
It’s like
everything else you do…you want to get better and keep moving
forward.
We all
want to grow into a better place and become a better
person…wife…mom…writer.
Sometimes we just need to ask
for help along the way.
And stay tuned for my next blog. It's the first in my How To series. First up? You guessed it...How to Edit Your Novel.
‘Til next
time…
Maggie
Want to
know more about this auto-correct phenomenon?
Check out
these link...
