Woe is I: Editors for Indies

I remember when I first started writing for the public to see. A friend, and fellow Indie author says it is like standing naked in front of a crowd. We all know when we started. That very first publication sent out there, usually in cyberspace. Then we waited... and waited... and waited... for that very first taste of feedback. Knowing that our masterpiece would undoubtably be not only well received, but one of the best things ever written! Or at least we hoped.

For me it was fanfiction that got me started. Specifically Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which just goes to show how much I am STILL in love with the vampire themed fantasy genre. Yes, somewhere out there are unedited versions of a lesser published me testing the waters of publication. Of course this was well before there was any such thing as ereaders, ipads, or any other tablet, except of course on Star Trek. Let us all take a moment to acknowledge the utter genius and vision of Gene Roddenberry.

Which brings me to my topic of this post: the necessity of an editor! Many of us in the Indie world have limited funds to spend on our publications and therefore skip the outside editor process. Sometimes we have friends look it over, or family members. And some of us just self-edit, reading and rereading it over and over again until we have read, rewritten and read again, a thousand times, thinking that will be enough.

When I first published The Community Vampire Series I was so excited that I was creating a book that I could hardly contain myself. My husband gave me a copy of Patricia T. O'Conner's book Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English, in Plain English, and it became my bible as I wrote. Every Indie author should have a copy of this book! It is incredibly easy to read, understand and use. So there I was, bible in hand, writing, reading, rewriting, reading again, and then starting the process all over again. I have a full time job, a husband and 2 children, so most of my writing and self-editing was done in the wee hours with some daylight blocks on the weekends here and there. But given all the time I had put into self-editing, with my new paperback companion at my side, there was no way that I could have flawed in the process. Afterall, my computer also has spellcheck and grammarcheck so how many mistakes could there really be?

Let's rewind a few years, ok, let's rewind like 20 years. We all have that one adult during our adolescence, often times a teacher, who influences us in such a way that they stay with us for the rest of our lives. Someone who has made such an impression on us that we find ourselves wondering, if they could see me now, would they be proud of what I have accomplished? For me it was Stuart Wood. Stu was my ninth grade English teacher. He was honest, fair and humorous. This man was able to create a love and understanding for Shakespeare in a bunch of 14 year old kids who could hardly even sound out the words in the plays. He knew this, so he read to us, adding a flare to the stories that we never would have appreciated had we been forced to read them on our own. Stu made reading fun, made us realize how easy it could be to lose yourself in another world. He made sense of Waiting for Godo, and we actually LIKED that story! So it was hardly a surprise when most of us took his 12th grade class in World Literature.

Stu and I remained friends after graduation for a little while, but as often happens, we lost touch over the years. Then facebook happened (input grandoire "tada" music) and although Stu was not on the social network, his daughter, who also attended the same high school as I did, was on. When I self-published my book I wanted to show my thanks and gratitude for this man who took my mere satisfaction with reading and truly turned it into a love. So I got his address and sent him a paperback copy of my first book, which of course included a dedication to him, and a three page hand-written letter to update my life since we had last spoken.

So I waited... and waited... and waited... and the feedback came rolling in from friends and family, all of them professing their adoration for my new little world, even those who professed their personal preference for reading anything BUT vampires. Then one day I got the phone call I had been waiting for. I didn't recognize the phone number so I did not pick it up (come on, I know you all do this too!) but I heard the voicemail. It went something like this: "Hi Jessie! Wow, you are an author indeed! I loved the book and your letter. But... I just wish you had had an editor... and I wished it had been me..." The rest is important only to me so I don't need to share. I was thrilled and disappointed all at the same time. The first thing I had done when my paperbacks had come in was to read the book and I found a list of mistakes that I hadn't seen before, so I knew that Stu had seen them too. To this day I wonder if he sat there with his red pen...

So I called Stu and he offered to be my editor moving forward and I have been so blessed with his insights, always teaching me the better ways to write things. You all don't know this but I throw a little inside joke in every book I write that only he and I (and anyone from our high school English classes) would get. He continues to make me a better writer each time. Every time I forward him a copy of my manuscript I feel like I am handing in an assignment to be graded. Well, I guess I am, in a way.

So now I have created this blog and I want to help other Indie authors like myself to get their works out there. There are so many incredibly talented writers out there who have such amazing stories to tell. So I have decided to create an author spotlight page on the blog to help out the Indie community. (Submission guidelines are outlined on the "Submission" page above.)

Which comes to the whole purpose of this post: we all need editors. I don't care how good of a writer you are or even if you are an editor in profession yourself. You cannot fully edit your own work and catch all the typos and grammar mistakes that have occurred. It's impossible, so just stop defending yourself right now and listen. First of all, as Indie authors we have day jobs (well most of us do anyway) so we write at night. We get tired, bleary-eyed and unfocused eventually, and then turn off the computer and go to bed with much less sleep then the other guy at work who is NOT writing a novel in the middle of the night. So we are going to make mistakes. Second, we know what we wrote, and rewrote, however many times, and our eyes tend to skip over things because our brain already knows what's written there. Third, spellcheck and grammarcheck both make mistakes, enough said on that.

Now let me tell you what someone who has never read your story sees: every misspelled, typo, incorrectly used grammar, double-written word or phrase in your entire manuscript. And it makes them stumble over your words, their brains forcing them to fix it in their minds. And instead of the fabulous story and world you have created for all to see, what they remember is how many mistakes they corrected with their proverbial red pen.

So how does one get an editor with a limited, if not non-existant budget? There are plenty of ways. Look at the people around you in your immediate circle, they are your primary resource. Are any of them English majors? Reading teachers? Or even an incredibly well-read individual? The more you read, the more you understand how the English language works. There are also Beta readers! I just did this for a fellow Indie recently. Beta-readers are probably the single most untapped resource for us. I know I have never used them before, mostly because I have Stu on the sidelines waiting for my next manuscript, although I think I may for my 5th book. Not only will they pick out the small errors that you missed, but they will also let you know how the story flows, what didn't make sense, how your timeline went off course for a moment. They are the next best thing to hiring an editor. Use the social networking communities! Use Google+, facebook, twitter and whatever else is out there. We have so many tools at our fingertips now, we just need to be patient enough to let them take the time to help us. WE NEED EDITORS! And there are so many people out there who are more than willing to help us without giving us a price for it, we just need to ask, accept the feedback without taking anything personally, and make adjustments in our writing as necessary.

I hope this post has been helpful to some of you. Ok, you can put down your red pens now, as I know you have all been checking for my own mistakes in this post. It's not like Stu read this over before I posted it! ;)