Alaska Romance Writers of America: January 2011

I take refuge in my writing. During difficult times writing has offered me a place to lose myself, a place where I lock in and focus to the point of losing track of time. Other things effect me this way; time in the dark room developing photographs, a bike ride on a beautiful Summer day, spending time with those I love in mirthful fits of giggling, watching an amazing film. However, those things are not always available to me. Writing is accessible. It's in my house, on my computer, and in my brain.
I must admit corporate writing doesn't give me the same escape as fictional writing. Business writing has its own reward of a job well done. Knowing that your little spin on something might be the selling point that people will remember and take with them. fiction writing offers an escape to another world far away from everyday life. Of course most of the fiction I write is historic, although I do have one set in the future, I have a time travel and a Super Hero story set in contemporary times.
Of late, my current escape is revising an Amazon war story set in ancient times. Does that ever take me out of the real world, to a culture where women were expert in their horsemanship, fierce warriors able to take down Kings. There will be no moment when one of my Amazon characters has to balance a checkbook, fill out a timesheet, call to make an appointment, or have a run in their hose. No, my amazons are occupied in a battle that will offer protection to their future generations. They are dashingly confident, intelligent, cunning, resourceful, and wise. Their culture is rich in stories and rites. They own themselves and belong to their ancestors and their destinies.
So, that is my latest escape at the end of a difficult day. I can roost on the shoulders of these characters and watch the life I create for them, unfurl.

Carmen

Spell checkers and other editing things.

Love them or hate them, they are helpful and useful tools. In fact, I recommend every writer have Spell Check turned on at all times. In MSWord, that little red line will help you catch misspellings immediately. Then there's the blue line to alert you to the wrong spelling, or possibly the wrong word—also a useful tool. The green grammar lines? Those I tend to ignore since fiction writing takes some liberties with proper English.

However.

Yeah, you knew that was coming. However. These built-in tools in super-smart word processing programs do not take the place of the human eye and, I hope, human intelligence.

After the program has done its best to help is when a really sharp-eyed editor or beta reader comes in. Someone who can catch the things your MSWord program and tired eyes won’t. There, their, and they’re all sound the same with very different meanings. She’s and she’d are very easy to mix up with the “s” and “d” keys being side by side. I see loose and lose mixed up more times than I care to mention. Your program won’t flag any of the above as misspelled.

Same with roll and role. “He acted out his roll with finesse and skill.” Does this mean he knew how to play a bit of bread? (Ha! Word just tried to correct the word for me. I set it straight.) I suppose it could mean he did a perfect job of rolling down the hill, across the floor, into bed… but in the context of the story, this was not the meaning.

I recently found this sentence in a published book: “He drew in a shaky breath, tried to recall if this was how he felt about her first kiss as a green lad of fourteen.” One word. Just one word is out of place here and makes the sentence ludicrous. Yet to a spell checker program everything is just hunky dory. Had that been the only instance of an error, I probably would have blown it off. Sadly, it was one of at least half a dozen errors that leaped off the page and threw me out of an otherwise entertaining story.

Of course, I’ve seen the spell checker do harm by trying to correct a word here and there. A badly spelled word can be switched in the blink of an eye. Back in the day when I edited technical reports for scientists, I caught one trying to marinate a laser. He’d tried to type “maintain” but mangled it so badly MSWord changed the word to “marinate.” I learned to read his reports very closely.

The key here is editing. Careful, thoughtful, intelligent human editing. A good edit will catch these little goofs that can cause an author’s intelligence and education to be called into question. Yes, typos will at some point escape everyone. It happens. I’ve seen it in NYT bestseller books. If there are no more than two per novel, those are easily shrugged off. More than that? Well, that’s where credibility begins to be called into question.

Years ago, two or three at least, I was reading a book released by my then publisher (the book was not mine, thankfully) and was horrified to see that consistently throughout the book, barely (Merriam Webster Definition of BARELY 1: in a meager manner : plainly 2: scarcely, hardly) was consistently replaced with barley. (BARLEY: a cereal grass.)

I’m sure the author knew the difference between the two, but no one caught the misspelling before release. One time in a novel, well, ok. But more than two dozen times? The author really liked that word, I suppose. Too bad it was the wrong one. At least it was consistent? Nah. Bad ju-ju all the way around.

Which leads me to something I’ve said since the days I was an editor and in charge of other editors who had the joy of editing my books.

NO-one is above editing, least of all me.

I don’t care who you are, or how many novels you’ve sold world-side, we ALL make mistakes. Whether from reading a manuscript too many times, fingers hitting the wrong key or an extra key, or MSWord trying to help out, we all need one more pair of sharp eyes to help us see the tiny errors hiding in the text. Or the not so tiny errors, such as missing words or extra limbs appearing in a love scene. Or the magical leap across the room complete with bouncing eyes. Or unintentional time or head hopping. Or changing hair/eye color without a reasonable explanation. No writer is immune.

Bottom line here. For all the “eyes” who beta-read and edit your brilliantly written book (novella, blog, etc.), the final responsibility falls to you, the author. That’s what galleys are for. They’re our last chance to make it perfect. Never, ever, rush this stage, or you might have me gently knocking at your inbox with a kindly worded email, which you’ll hopefully take to heart in the spirit intended: support and assistance.

Okay, seriously, only my closest compatriots get those emails. I barely have time to write my own novels and beg for critiquing without adding more to my plate. Because with what I throw at them? I get it back ten-fold. Lord love my crit partners, because I sure do—after I finish whining about their comments.

So what do you do? I’ve heard of several things authors do to help catch these little things.