One of the biggest complaints of Amazon reviewers is poor editing. But what is a writer to do?
I read over my stories multiple times, have my computer read it out loud to me, and send it through my critique group. After letting it sit for a minimum of six months to get fresh eyes on it, I read through it multiple times again before sending it off to a freelance editor. But even as I am making the corrections sent back to me, I still find errors we all missed. It is so frustrating.
One Facebook writers group I belong to had a discussion about this and one noted author advised that, “Every book will end up with three typos in it no matter what. Just accept it.”
Ugh. Really?
The Writer Circle recently shared a post from Crafty House that talked about this same problem. Apparently a computer programmer at Amazon had a typo in a bit of code that nearly shut down the Internet. http://bit.ly/2tlL7io
Okay so maybe my typing errors don’t have the potential to such down the World Wide Web, but can they be any less damaging to my career? When I am human, as is my ever-so-fabulous and yet still imperfect human critique group, and my high priced editor, is perfection even possible?
Is it permissible to throw up our hands and say we did the best we could? Even best sellers who publish through the big houses release books with typos. Still readers seem to expect nothing less than perfection.
It can paralyze an author to the point they can’t release their work for fear an error is still lurking between the pages. Or it can trigger apathy in other writers who say perfection is impossible, so this is ‘good enough.’ Their work is released with many errors and the reading public blast them for it.
So what’s a serious writer to do?
We are not perfect, but we strive for our very best. Never throwing up our hands with ‘good enough’, we work for excellence.
I read over my stories multiple times, have my computer read it out loud to me, and send it through my critique group. After letting it sit for a minimum of six months to get fresh eyes on it, I read through it multiple times again before sending it off to a freelance editor. But even as I am making the corrections sent back to me, I still find errors we all missed. It is so frustrating.
One Facebook writers group I belong to had a discussion about this and one noted author advised that, “Every book will end up with three typos in it no matter what. Just accept it.”
Ugh. Really?
The Writer Circle recently shared a post from Crafty House that talked about this same problem. Apparently a computer programmer at Amazon had a typo in a bit of code that nearly shut down the Internet. http://bit.ly/2tlL7io
Okay so maybe my typing errors don’t have the potential to such down the World Wide Web, but can they be any less damaging to my career? When I am human, as is my ever-so-fabulous and yet still imperfect human critique group, and my high priced editor, is perfection even possible?
Is it permissible to throw up our hands and say we did the best we could? Even best sellers who publish through the big houses release books with typos. Still readers seem to expect nothing less than perfection.
It can paralyze an author to the point they can’t release their work for fear an error is still lurking between the pages. Or it can trigger apathy in other writers who say perfection is impossible, so this is ‘good enough.’ Their work is released with many errors and the reading public blast them for it.
So what’s a serious writer to do?
We are not perfect, but we strive for our very best. Never throwing up our hands with ‘good enough’, we work for excellence.
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