Editing is Everything

 

With self publishing, it's easy for anyone to just publish a first draft online and get away with it. There's so little editing done across the board, from books to news articles, and even marketing departments will knowingly get it wrong if it "just sounds better". No one has time for editing anymore, and this was one vital aspect of writing that was drummed into me. Your novel had to be perfect, at least in terms of basic grammar and spelling, before you could consider presenting it to a publisher. And this expectation still lives on today.

So discovering that some of the recent best selling novels actually went to print in all formats with huge grammatical issues, spelling errors and misused vocabulary was incredibly disheartening. I could see there was one aspect that was overriding all of the rules and expectations. One little thing that has far too much influence these days.

The almighty dollar.

Striking while that iron was hot meant certain books were going to print at least electronically with the excuse they'd fix it before the print editions came out. And even then, there were still issues a decent proofreader would've brought to someone's attention. Or the writer didn't like what the editor was trying to achieve, and the writer won the battle. This is not what readers are paying for. Books are expensive, even ebooks, and people do expect these to be of some quality when they are coming from reputable sources. You would expect a movie to be edited before release, a song to be mastered correctly, a news article to be devoid of spelling mistakes, and yet here we are. And it probably wouldn't bother me half as much if I didn't feel it was contributing to a decline in the basic understanding of our language. You're more likely to be raked over the coals for a spelling mistake in a tweet than you are for a badly edited book. Your reviewers will call you out, but it hasn't changed a thing.

These things are not going unnoticed. This rush to print mentality is resulting in continuity errors. It's resulting in badly edited films, and forcing musicians to bring forward release dates due to unpolished tracks leaking. If the demand is high, it is also fleeting. So now we're being charged for products that may be under par. Certain books are actually being used in classes to illustrate what not to do, which is comforting in a way, but badly written books are still shortchanging these students, who have a right to read decent literature. Even books written for young audiences are edited precisely. Otherwise, we're lowering the standards for literature. Our great 21st century novels will be considered embarrassments next to the books we now hold in high esteem.

I'm don't rely entirely on myself or Grammarly (which doesn't understand colloquialisms to know when you have actually used the word "patience" in context - if you watch their commercial, this is one of the words used in the ad as an example of how useful this application is for everyday use). Not having an understanding of language causes this confusion. It's no wonder people are always questioning the difference between certain words, like accept and except. This is primary school stuff. What happened?

I did not pay as much attention when I was releasing my self published books, and I found many errors after the fact, some of which others had also glossed over. Editing is a grueling process, I dislike it and I can't rely on myself or an automated proofreader to get it right. Editing has improved my spelling and grammar, and I'm far more aware of my mistakes now than I have been previously. I didn't succeed in university, I did hand in essays and stories with errors. But I know this time I have still put in infinitely more effort than some people will now. You can forgive a self-published, self-edited book to a point, but a professional wouldn't let anything go to print until more than one pair of eyes had gone over a text, more than once.