In Praise of Proofreaders by Mar Preston

We’ve all read bestsellers from the five major publishing companies containing errors that jerk you right off the page.  Misspelled words.  Words jammed together.  Missing words.  Not to mention formatting problems and grammatical goofs.

Yet you will look through a book with yellowing pages in vain for these errors.  I remember my mother and the librarian clucking their tongues over a proofreading error found in a book long ago.  Such errors were rarities.  What has happened?  

• ·         Self-publishing

• ·         Proofreading costs have risen

• ·         Shorter attention spans

• ·         Over-reliance on electronic proofreading programs

Self-Publishing

            The bottleneck that once existed between writer and publisher – the agent – no longer ferrets out writers who have not polished their work to a high gloss.  It is a hard lesson to realize that you cannot proofread your own work.

Proofreading Costs

            Costs for professional proofreading have risen and can amount to a significant fee, posing a particular problem for many self-publishing authors.  Proofreaders estimate costs by the hour, page, and word.  I’ve read estimates as high as 6 cents per word for fiction. 

Our Attention Spans

            Advertisers calculate that we now have only a 30-second attention span.  We flit like butterflies from one thought to another.  Proofreading requires a laser-like, sustained focus.

Electronic Proofreading Programs

            While proofreading programs such as spell-check provide a good place to start for an initial check of a document, people can develop a false sense of security using such programs.  A careful review by a patient, trained set of eyes is still needed.

Singing the Praises of My New Proofreader, Mary Goss

            I met Mary Goss a few years ago at a Sisters in Crime convention in Long Beach, which she was attending with author friend Dianne Emley.  She has proofread my last two novels, and I was very pleased with her meticulous work.  Over twenty five years of proofreading legal prose has trained her eye and honed her skills.  

            Mary’s advice to writers is to try to get a second set of eyes to read through your manuscript, as it is difficult to spot errors in one’s own work.  If you cannot afford a professional proofreader, find a detail-oriented person who has strong English skills and at least a slight case of OCD.  

            Find beta readers. These are people who have an interest in you and your work and want to see you do well. Beta readers are fans of crime fiction and willing to read the entirety of your best first draft. Beta readers are somewhat similar to your critique group members, but your critique group may have read Chapter IV seventeen times. Beta readers have fresh eyes. Anyone you can hornswoggle into doing this is valuable to some extent, but most valuable will be the reader who can catch glaring errors.

            Now I expect that Mary Goss may have a built-in level of concentration that may be superior to mine or yours.  She admits to a wee bit of OCD, but this quirky quality is a good thing in a proofreader.  She has likely honed her skills as a proofreader over the 25 years that she has been reading court transcripts.  Practicing a skill over decades certainly would make you better at it.

            Mary would like to expand her business to proofread more works of fiction.  Her contact info is:  iphone, 310-508-9476; e-mail, mkgoss@att.net        

            As author Isaac Bashevis Singer has said, “A writer doesn’t die of heart failure, but of typographical errors.”

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Check out my webpage for a boxed set of the first four titles in  "Writing Your First Mystery"

Escaping Winter

I’m escaping winter in my California mountain village. So I’m looking for a furnished rental place of some kind in Ventura, California.

It’s not so easy because I want to bring my two cats along. Landlords have had bad experiences, and I understand that.

Since I grew up in northern Ontario, I’m well aware this is baby cold. Nonetheless, it bothers me. I’m also looking forward to bright lights, a choice in restaurants, and places to go after dark. Like most villages, everything shuts down here after dark. And there are no streetlights. Sometimes I get tired of my own company, I must admit.

Sooner or later, my plan is to move to Ventura.

Ventura is warm and sweet and there’s somewhere to go after dark.

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I’ve made a lot of friends on the California coast through Sisters in Crime. Moving means taking a look at the books I need in my life. I’m a fast reader and go through books way too fast. I’m always scrounging for something to read. Some of my books I want to keep, but which ones?

I mostly read fiction when I read actual books. I read nonfiction online, not that that makes a lot of sense. Since I write crime fiction, the fiction I read is—no surprise—crime fiction. But I’ve collected paperback and hard-bound reference books on police procedure, police science, and forensics. Those I keep.

Most crime fiction novels I read once. Some of them I read all the way through and enjoy. Those I pass on to my mystery reader pals at Sisters in Crime Bakersfield meetings. I go to writers conferences and there are always books available and books for sale. I’m looking at my six book shelves now.

I’m not going to throw out the dictionary my parents bought me when I went away to university, or the Norton Anthology I used in my first English classes. This is where sentiment and nostalgia creeps in.  This must be suppressed ruthlessly. I don’t dare to go through the boxes of photos because of the avalanche of emotion.

When I was young and foolish, I thought that having books on my shelves told the world that I was smart. I don’t care anymore whether people think I’m smart.  That’s a freedom to put books in other people’s hands who will appreciate them now.

Some are going to the English teacher at the nearby correctional institute. Many inmates are poor readers, and using these books as teaching material makes me feel good about giving them away. Our nearest library is 18 miles away. Some will go to the Friends of the Library Sale.

I’m finally giving up my Guide to Literary Agents 2005. Some books don’t have any value to anyone.

***
You might be curious about the crime fiction novels I've written . Payback is set in the village where I live. The others are set in glitzy Santa Monica.

A sequel to Payback, titled The Most Dangerous Species  is moving slowly through the publication process.  Sign up here for my yearly newsletter and I will notify you when it is released.
 

 

My beloved companion died a week ago now. Over last weekend, I cried so hard for her I made myself sick. I think that phase of grieving has passed. Most of us have lost a pet, so I can write about Lily knowing you will understand how hard and how completely you can love an animal.

It’s a love that is pure and unconditional. Animals return that love to you in the same uncomplicated fashion.  Their love is not mixed in with hurts and disappointments, slights and petty offenses, misunderstandings and losses,  as our human relationships can be. A loving relationship with an animal illustrates the best in us. 

And the worst. We see animals hideously injured and wondered who are the people who do this? What sickness in them bubbles to the surface to starve or beat an animal? Where does it come from? I don’t want to linger there.

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What has risen to the surface in me since Lily’s death is my old fear of The Axe Murderer. I live in a village in rural, mountainous California. Crime here is likely to be teenagers breaking in to vacant cabins. Nonetheless, I am a student of crime and crime fiction, and dark scenarios dance in my mind when I wake in the night.

It’s silent here, and dark. No streetlights.  A breeze might blow up and sigh through the pines and the oaks. Occasionally I hear the yips and barks of coyotes. Yet the motion sensor light often goes on signaling some animal is padding around the house at the bottom of the stairs.  A raccoon, a bobcat.  It could even be the mountain lion that is caught on wildlife cameras. The bears have been driven into town by the drought. 

I’m much more afraid of the human variety of mammal. Lily used to bark frantically when she caught the scent of the bear. I knew her bear bark. As she grew old, she became deaf, her eyes clouded, and she couldn’t see well in the dark. Arthritis and Cushing’s disease took away her agility. I had to carry her up and down the stairs. 

Still, I felt she protected me, even when I knew that was a fanciful notion. Cats can stare at a wall until you believe something terrible lurks behind the drywall. They can look over your shoulder and convince you a killer is right there, a blade ready to strike between your shoulders. 

When I first moved here, I had night terrors about The Axe Murderer. Stalking the back deck, he would be wearing a long black cloak, drag chains, and have red eyes. Thank you, Stephen King.  Thank you very much. Then Lily came into my life and I forgot about him. He’s back. 

My doors lock and I have a butcher knife and a pry bar on my night table. In the state of mind I’m in right now, a gun would be foolish. I might shoot my foot off if the squirrel ran across the roof at night.  

It’s too soon to find another dog. I know that the right dog will find me, just as Lily did.

All is well. All is basically well. Time will pass. 

 Please see a related post: http://marpreston.com/writing-without-a-dog.html

Why Readers May Not Like Your Books by Mar Preston

Did anybody sit down and draw like Michelangelo after a few tries? Play like the master cellist Pablo Casals? Till his death at 96, Casals practiced every day “because I feel as though I’m making improvements.” Don't give up if you're a new or aspiring writer.

You get better at it the more you write. No one else brings to your manuscript the same life experiences that color the characters, setting, and plot that you are writing. Your story is important.

Don't give up.

 

Liking a book--or not--is subjective.  It may be something as simple as the setting is a place where a reader may have broken up with an old girlfriend. Your reader picks up your book and the first five pages remind him of heartbreak. That is not a judgment on your book.

Your book description may have conveyed the impression this was a light-hearted “cozy” featuring cats and an amateur detective. Instead your book is really noir, dark in tone, and not something your reader is in the mood for. Again, not a judgment on your book.

Your reader may be the kind that reads only a few books a year and may face your book with many competing agendas for his time. Just because you read dozens of books a year and are in the habit of reading, too many others aren’t. They’re TV watchers, or gardeners, or like to hang out with the family in their leisure time. 

Another book may have taken precedence. All this publicity over Harper Lee’s new book may have compelled your reader to take another look at To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Your first five pages may have started slow. There’s no zing there to keep the reader turning pages and to get them away from the TV.

A speaker, at one of the first writer’s conferences I went to, said when you’d written a million words you’d be published. I’d written about 5000 at that point so you can imagine how those words resonated. Now when writers no longer have to win their way past the bottleneck of agent and publisher to publication, these words may no longer to true in one sense.  You can publish your second draft, without the advice of an editor, critique group, or proofreaders. Your mother loves it. That’s good enough.

The reason readers may not like your book is that you may not be at the top of your game yet, sad to say. Your next story, or your next novella or full-length piece of crime fiction may be the one that grabs notice. 

Sometimes it’s perplexing to look at two books side by side and wonder why one succeeds and another doesn’t.  It’s all subjective (when you hit all the high points that are currently popular in your genre.) 

The important thing is to honor your own voice, to keep going when the shadows creep in and darken your optimism.  Keep going when the most published author in your critique group, the one with the most insistent loud voice, tells you to make your heroine a hero, rewrite the ending, or just give up on this story. Don’t do it. Persevere.

If you have completed a manuscript that has a beginning, middle, and end, with a plot that makes sense, characters that are alive and engaged with each other, and a colorful setting—whatever else is wrong with it can be improved. 

If your spirits are sagging, along with the middle of your story, don’t give up. Take an online writing course, find a critique partner, trust a friend who loves reading your genre. If you’re ready to listen and learn, and take criticism to heart, there are techniques you can learn to improve your writing.

I know a little about writing mysteries and the craft of telling stories. You might check out my eBook series on “Writing Your FirstMystery.”