I\u2019ve been working on things that take concentration and time\u2014lots of uninterrupted time. And I\u2019ve given up a few things in the processes. One is my daily walk (I\u2019m definitely walking this morning before the heat sets in) and another is my daily blog. I\u2019ve missed a few lately\u2014breaking my \u201cdaily\u201d record.<\/p>\n
What am I doing? This weekend, I\u2019ve been writing the index for my upcoming book for Allworth Press, Talk Up Your Book<\/em>. And for the last few weeks and now sporadically when I absolutely must have a break from the tedium, I work on my novel. (Working title, The Klepto Cat Mystery.)<\/p>\n I thought I did the final proof for the nonfiction book a month or so ago and actually started working on the index then. One of the experts who received a galley in order to write a testimonial, however, suggested a format change that the publishers\u2019 editors accepted. Without consulting me, they made major formatting changes which increased the book by around 30 pages. Now all of my preliminary index entries are off from about page 40 to page 300. Not only that, the spacing is off in many areas because they didn\u2019t do a thorough job in making these changes. In what should have been a clean proof this time (the 3rd pass), I have located approximately 40 problems\u2014all resulting from their attempt to make a major change midstream. And one that was not necessary, in my opinion. It would have been fine the way it was. It was one of those close calls\u2014an either\/or situation. It was right either way. And I would have suggested they leave it the way it was. If it ain\u2019t broke\u2026you know\u2026 <\/p>\n When my mind isn\u2019t so cluttered with the proofing and the index, which I\u2019m eager to get out the door to make room for an incoming editing job, I want to discuss how to handle authors of poorly written published books. I have two authors in mind at the moment whose novels I have tried to read, but couldn\u2019t because there were so many problems. One of them even had some decent reviews.<\/p>\n I guess I read books partially from an editor\u2019s point of view. If it is full of clich\u00e9s and mistakes and doesn\u2019t ring true, I am not interested in reading it. If it is sappy, predictable, trite and written as if by a third-grader or for a third-grade mentality, I am totally turned off by it. Last night, I started reading a light mystery novel and I kept laughing out loud. My partner, Dennis, said, \u201cFunny story, huh?\u201d <\/p>\n I said, \u201cNo, I\u2019m just blown away by the triteness of this writing.\u201d It was unbelievably dull and uninspired. Last year, I bought a book by someone I\u2019ve known professionally for a while. I thought I\u2019d read it while traveling. I ended up leaving it on the plane on the first leg of my trip because I couldn\u2019t read comfortably past the errors. The writing was decent, but OMG, the grammatical mistakes were so distracting, I couldn\u2019t read the thing.<\/p>\n Now, what I want to talk to you about is this\u2014do I contact these authors and gently suggest that they bring their next manuscript to me (or another qualified BOOK editor) before publishing it or do I just stay out of it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been working on things that take concentration and time\u2014lots of uninterrupted time. And I\u2019ve given up a few things in the processes. One is my daily walk (I\u2019m definitely walking this morning before the heat sets in) and another is my daily blog. I\u2019ve missed a few lately\u2014breaking my \u201cdaily\u201d record. What am I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,10],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t