What to do when s*#t happens
After Power Editing For Fiction Writers was published, sales went well and I got a few amazing reviews at amazon.com.
Still, s*#t happened!
In this non-fiction book I wrote to help writers self-edit their novels, I list my 12 favorite rhetorical devices.
Except that I repeated one!
Now, I had betareaders, I had paid an outside editor, and NO ONE caught this glaring goof!
I was not aware of it until I received an e-mail from Dave at onlinebookservices.com
Dave wrote “In your section on rhetorical devices you have Asyndeton under section 4 and again as section 8. You use different examples, but have the same title. The phrasing is different but the message is the same.”
Not only that, but he found a place where “You also have ‘Stephen King’ as ‘Steven King.’”
In abject mortification I e-mailed Dave immediately to thank him for his comments. I spent a day mostly hiding in bed before I began creating new publishing documents with the corrections.
In a later e-mail, Dave noted, “I always worry when I add anything to my website, or post anything up, that I am going to misspell something or make some horrific blunder.”
My point in telling you this story is that s*#t happens.
The faster you get okay with that, go forward and fix it, the faster you’ll get over how humiliated you feel.
Since I didn’t know Dave, I was curious about him. I found his website, www.onlinebookservices.com and learned he has a lot more experience in the editing arena than I do.
Besides e-book editing and proof-reading, here are some of the other services he offers:
– Re-editing for existing published books
– Developmental Editing in non-fiction and the fiction genres of Crime/Thrillers, Fantasy, Paranormal, Humor, and Erotica.
– British & American English editing
His website also lists flexible and affordable packages of services.
For my next book, I plan to hire Dave to do the editing.
P.s. I realize that in today’s literary and electronic world it would be acceptable for me to write out the word shit, but I guess I’m kinda old-fashioned in that I like the suggestive look of all those symbols.
Carolyn V. Hamilton 