How important is perfection?

Hello my friends!

I haven't been blogging much of late in part because it's the holiday season here in the US, but also I'm frantically working with my formatter at 52 Novels to get Fresh Ice out and into your hands before Christmas. 

Editing is never, ever easy.  American grammar rules seem to have changed when I blinked, and what editors do and do not accept also changes.

But wait, says I, aren't I self publishing my books?

Yes, says I, but that doesn't mean I get to slack on the editing.

One of the knocks against self publishing has always been that the end product is just not as polished as one put out by a "real" publisher.  I once had a writing teacher who told me, "If you're going to submit a story to a magazine, or anywhere, the manuscript must be perfect.  We have the technology, so editors expect it." 

My critique partners and I break our backs trying to get that perfect clean copy out and into your hands.  And then we turn around and we're reading a book, put out by a "real" publisher, and it's loaded with misspells, grammatical errors, and POV errors.  It's frustrating.

In my own experience, my first book, Dream in Color, was put out by a "real" publisher.  I went through the editing process with an editor.  We went through each page slowly, carefully, painfully, to get a perfectly clean copy.

My second book, Lies in Chance, I self published.  Again, my team; critique partners, beta reader, my mom, all read through and did our very best to make sure everything was clean and perfect.

Then we released the two books to the wide world of readers.  I haven't exactly hit the New York Times best seller list, but I have had people come up to me, people I don't know and am not related to, and they tell me they love my books.  Hearing these comments, I was feeling pretty darn good about my editing skills.

And then, a co-worker read my books. Now, granted, she's not what you'd call a reader.  She told me the only books she had in her home were my two books and the Bible.  And she's a bit...odd.  (want to know how odd?  Check out my other blog by clicking on this.)  Anyway, she read my two books, informed me that she now knew exactly everything about me to my very soul, and that she'd found ten mistakes in the two books.

Ten mistakes, total, in two full length novels.  "I was embarrassed for you," she told me.

I was embarrassed, too. Not actually because of the mistakes, but because that's what she focused on.  This is a woman who, believe me, is really missing out on life because of where she places her focus.  It's that whole, "Can't see the forest for the trees" mentality.  But her comment did get me to wondering about the quality of my work.

I thought back on all the books I've read, books done by "real" publishers, books by self published authors, and I realized that while I may have caught a mistake or two here or there, I rarely noted it.  I look, when I read, for the over all story.  I'm not going to throw a Phillipa Gregory book down in frustration because I found a misspelled word.  I'm not going to give up reading John  Grisham's books just because he had a POV issue in one sentence in one novel.

But it does bring up a valid point:  In this new age of new authors flooding the market with self published work, how important is perfect editing?  I've read some self published books that are atrocious when it comes to editing.  It's distracting.  But what's permissible?  We all want perfection, but we'll never achieve it.  After the work I've done on two books, and now my third, I realize that perfection, even in this digital age, is simply not attainable.  Spell check is not perfect.  Line edits are not perfect.  And the minute you format a document for e-publishing, weird things happen to your manuscript.

How many mistakes are permissible, and when do we stop reading a book because of grammar errors?  I'm not talking about the big ones, like getting "there," "they're," and "their," wrong.  I'm talking about using a comma instead of a period, or backwards quotation marks, (which happen all on their own, believe me) or a word missing a letter.  How many are okay?  How much is too much?  And how can anyone be certain they have a perfect, clean copy? 

"It's an imperfect world.  Screws fall out all the time."  That's a quote from "The Breakfast Club," and it rings true now.  Do we throw out a good story because there's a misspelled word?

So I have, in my two novels, ten mistakes of some sort.  What gives me a sense of relief is that one was edited by a professional editor and one was done by my team, and the mistakes in the books are equal. 

Maybe I could make it a challenge...find the mistakes in each book, get my third book for free?

It's a thought rolling through my brain as I finish my final edit on my new book.

Revisionist theories...and cake...

Good afternoon!



I'm currently in the agonies of a first draft for a new novel. Meanwhile, my dear critique partner Linda is going throw edits.

Who has the worse job?

Some say that the first draft of a novel is the hardest thing to write. Getting to the words, "The End" is painful, they say, and you just have to vomit it out and then focus on rewrites.
Now that I've been through the editing process from start to finish, I'm going to go ahead and disagree with that theory. The first draft is the one time you get complete creative control over everything. Nothing is wrong, everything is fantastic. The characters are fresh, unpredictable, and new. Bonus, word counts don't matter. Biggest bonus, neither do spelling, grammar, speech tags or logic. In short, the first draft is a blissful chocolate birthday cake before the candle wax drips on it, or people cut into it, or anyone digests one bite of it.

(Yes, I liked your first draft very much!)

The second draft, the one we sort of tentatively send to our critique partners chapter by chapter (and I'm going to apologize now to my critique partner Linda, who has suffered through too many "first draft" chapters lately.) that become painful. The second, third, fourth drafts all have to make sense. The characters have to act in a logical manner. (Unlike real life where stuff happens, regardless of logic.) Word counts and chapter structure are vital.


Worse yet, any change you make has to be made all the way through the whole manuscript.


Oh that's the worst. Make the tiniest little change on page 290 in a second draft...you better make sure it doesn't affect anything in pages 1-289. Sort of like when Homer Simpson's toaster acted as a time machine and, while back in time, he stepped on a bug, which removed the concept of donuts in his present day. (Someone used a knitting analogy on me for this, but I don't knit...I watch TV.) Every little thing you change in a second or third draft is not only going to affect something forward in the manuscript, it's going to affect things backwards, too.

"Lies In Chance" is my shining example of editing gone haywire. First of all, I've edited beyond words on this thing, and the versions of this novel are endless and varied. I think, think, think I'm at the end of it, though once I sell it, I know revisions will be aplenty. But I know these characters better than I know my own children (some days I like them better, too.) but even then, I've made some changes forwards that didn't get made backwards. The results are hilarious. (All I can say is, if you have a character that's living under an assumed name, and you change that assumed name, change it all the way through the manuscript!) Sort of.

As writers, it's true, you can't get bogged down in making your first draft perfect. Just write it. Then take the whole manuscript, and start editing. And editing. And revising. It's a long process, writing a book. It's not a flash of creative brilliance. If you want that, paint something. (And now I can hear my mom and her painter friends howling at me. LOL!) Writing a novel is more like a triathlon. The swimming is just the start. Then you've got that super long bike ride and a grueling, almost impossible run.
But it's not impossible, my friends. You can finish that novel. You can revise that novel. You can sell that novel!

It takes time and it takes energy. Now go forth and WRITE!

There's no such thing as over-editing...or is there?

Good morning!

I'm back from conference and now I'm faced with not one, but two stories I must edit to submit. Call it the perfect storm of emails...whatever. The fact is, I have 50 pages of "Lies in Chance" that I must get to the agent yesterday and now, The Wild Rose Press has requested some chapters of my "Lies in Chance" prequel, "Love is Elementary."

Now, this should be ready to go right? Should just be a matter of cutting, pasting, attaching, and emailing.

Nope...not even close.

I don't know about most writers, but I have yet to send anything that's requested without hours of editing. Working under the idea that there's no such thing as over editing, I labor over phrase after phrase of a document that's already been edited several times.

Am I over doing it? Quite possibly.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of the show "Project Runway." One of the comments I hear all the time is that the garment looks "overworked." I have gotten comments on "Lies in Chance" that the book is obviously the product of very, very careful editing.

Am I going too far? Do we all go too far?

I had a writing instructor once, Elliott, you know her, who said, "Because the technology is in place to put out letter perfect documents, editors and agents expect letter perfect documents." In the days of turning in hand written manuscripts (I often envy the authors of yesteryear, like Edgar Allen Poe. He had time for drug addiction...he didn't have to deal with Spellcheck. Authors today have no time to engage in anything illicit or fun. We're too busy being perfect.)

So off I go to edit. Maybe I'm over doing it. Maybe I'll be rejected because it's too perfect.

Okay, I can hear you laughing at that.

I'll just keep editing until someone tells me to stop.

Edit, edit, edit SUBMIT!

Good morning!

Well friends, I've got a story finally ready for submission to The Wild Rose Press. I'm pretty excited about it because it's a shorter story, which, for me, is something of an accomplishment. I was able to tell a story in under 30, 000 words!

Editing a shorter story is a challenge because I really, really want to add, add, add! I want to add characters, add a storyline, add actions. Recalling my early days with "Dream in Color" when I sent it out at 40,000 words and getting all sorts of rejections because it was too short, I now always want to add.

Selling short stories is a great way to get your toes wet in the publishing world. Granted, agents and book publishers aren't exactly turning handsprings over short stories, but the magazine and epub markets are wide open. Yesterday was Earth Day, and while I'm hardly a tree hugging environmentalist, I do think we need to treat our planet a little more gently. One way is going the e pub route. Granted, book downloads will probably never take the place of print books. But, in this Ipod generation, carrying multiple books in a machine the size of a steno notepad is not only a good idea, it's almost a must.

With the demand for a faster turn around, again the Ipod generation at work, epubs are looking for new material. It still has to be good material, but there's more room in the electronic world for stories that are shorter than novel length.

There are almost countless epubs out there, so remember one very important thing: You should NEVER pay anyone to publish your book or story. They pay you.
(Unless you're working through a self publish or vanity press, which is a different beast entirely.) An agent should NEVER ask for money up front. They get paid based on what you make. Keep these two things in mind when looking for an agent or an epublishing editor and you'll be a happy camper!

So I'm off to submit a story, and I'm very excited. The high of being published can't be matched! I need another high!

Have a great weekend all! And don't forget to WRITE!

Writing a new chapter while keeping the old one.

Good morning!

Skating history was made last night in Vancouver when a North American Team (Canadian, to be specific) took gold in Ice Dancing, breaking the Russian/Soviet 30 plus year grip on the medal. Now, a Russian pair did hold on to get the bronze, keeping alive the streak of medals in the event. (The US pair took silver, BTW.)

The announcers said over and over how it was a "new chapter" in Ice Dancing, with the success of these upstart North American pairs in an event long held by Eastern Europe. Whether you're a fan of ice dancing (I am) or you don't think it's a sport (I don't, I just happen to love the beauty of it) or even if you're just a fan of the Olympics (I am, OF COURSE!) you know that last night's competition and results were significant.

This Olympics has been all about writing a new chapter for the US. I don't have to think too far back to remember a Winter Olympics where the US were barely a blip on the radar in events like Skiing, bobsled, and men's figure skating. We pinned all of our national hopes on the young, unlikely legs of some teen aged girl as she jumped and twirled on her skates. This time around, we've already struck multiple gold on the slopes, we hold a gold in men's figure skating, and don't look now, but our hockey team just toppled mighty Canada. (Not exactly a miracle like 1980 Lake Placid, but impressive all the same.) Oh, and we got a medal in Nordic combined! How unlikely is that?

The same is true when you sit down to work on a story or on a novel. (See, I brought it back to writing!) You've got notes, you've got an outline. (Well, if you're really good you have an outline. If you're like me, you have some notes and a few sketchy paragraphs.) You know where you want a story to go, probably, but getting there seems really unlikely. Sort of like the US getting a medal in Nordic Combined.

Sometimes getting to where you want to be with a story means writing a whole new chapter. It means cutting, deleting, erasing, or throwing away the old chapters that don't work. Don't be afraid to say, "As much as I like this chapter, and I'm comfortable with it, it's not working in my story. It needs to go and I need to write a new chapter."

By the same token, take a close look at what is working in your story. What do you really like? Don't throw it all out, keep that foundation that started the whole thing. For example, if you read a very early version of what is now "Lies in Chance" you wouldn't even recognize it. At some point, several years ago, I looked at the manuscript and said, "None of this is working. It has to go." But I kept three very key things that I loved. 1) I kept the friendship between Bryan and Drew. 2) I kept Shara's back story. 3) I kept the barn fire scene.

Yep, I threw out roughly six hundred pages of work (Because it was a two book masterpiece at one point, yikes) and kept two elements and one scene. And now it's a book I'm proud of, and excited to see move forward in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel awards this year.

With "Dream in Color" I didn't throw out much...I had to add quite a lot because that was way too short for mainstream publication. Oddly enough, even though I thought the book was done...there were all sorts of new chapters to be built on the old ones.

So take a look at your work in progress. What's working, what's not? Don't be afraid to throw out parts and hold on to parts. Do not fear writing that new chapter!

If it isn't broken...mess with it anyway and see what happens!

Good afternoon!

This is actually take two of my attempt to blog today. The wind is howling outside, but it's sticky and humid...and a cold front is promised. So it's pretty much a typical bizarre weather day here in the Cheesehead state. The cold front will be just in time for Girl child to unveil her...sleeveless Halloween costume. Yep, she forgot the first rule of trick or treating in Wisconsin: Have a costume you can wear a coat under.

So I was at my favorite retail website www.cafepress.com earlier this week when I found a T-shirt that read, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."

Truer words were never said...and boy did I need to hear those words this week!

I'm stalled, friends, stalled big time. Stalled so bad that I can't even think about Na No this month mostly because we all know I'm not going to write 50,000 words in a month, let's be honest, but also because I'm STALLLLLLLLLLLLLLEDDDDDDDDDDD!

My work in progress, a dark, dark, dark DARK contemporary romance (did I mention it was DARK?) is moving along nicely...until this past week. All this time to write and no actual words coming out. It's not a matter of creativity. It's not a matter of knowing where the story is going, it's a matter of I just don't like the chapter I'm stuck on. It's not fun, it's not funny, it's not sexy....but it must be there. I can't just jump over it. Things will not make sense.

It's not that there's anything wrong with it. I just don't like it. It's sort of dull. It seemed really fun when I wrote it a few weeks ago, but now that I've inserted it into the flow of the story, it just seems....flat.

So...."no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."

If the chapter doesn't evoke anything from me, there's no point in keeping it.

Today's fiction world is so competitive, so glutted with authors and books and voices and titles that you simply cannot have two pages of so-so writing. Herman Melville would have been shot for about fifty of his chapters in "Moby Dick..." (You know, the chapters that had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PLOTLINE? Anyone who thinks that mess of disorganized rambling by the most boring human mind on the planet is a Great American Novel has not read the book. I promise you that!) Everything must flow and flow quickly from page to page to page. Every page must have a hook...you writers know what I mean.

Having gone through this past year of editing with Aly over at Wild Rose Press, I've learned a lot about writing and editing.

So, whilst there's nothing really wrong with that chapter, it's going into the deleted file...and maybe I'll just skip everything and get right to the dead body...or the sex.

After all, I'm not writing a book about whaling...THANK HEAVENS!

Have a great Halloween weekend all!