The Summer of Editing
I made a promise to myself today. It’s sort of like a New Year’s Resolution, in a sense, except I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions, and this New Year’s Eve, I was spending my last night on Earth in the presence of my father – I spoke to him on the phone over the next few days, but I didn’t see him again between about 10:30 pm on December 31 and when he died January 3rd. But today, I made myself a promise. I will be brave enough to put all of my writing on my laptop and spend time going over it, giving it a second look, and give it another round of proofreading and copy editing. It makes me nervous, but I quit smoking. I should be up to this. I am pretty sure it will be easier to do if I am not trying to pass college classes at the same time, so I’m going to do it this summer, while I’m out of school.
Grammarly
I discovered Grammarly today, thanks to a kind student in my Shakespeare class. I can’t afford to
pay the $11,000 I was quoted for editing my shortest book, “Warmth.” If I had $11,000, I wouldn’t be driving a 20 year old car with a huge dent on the front fender and no radio. I would definitely be out buying a radio for my car – AT LEAST, and getting the driver’s seat fixed so that it was secured with actual bolts, and not a combination of ropes and bungie cords. But I can sort of barely afford the around $30 a month that it costs to subscribe to Grammarly – if it works.
Right now I am testing it out on a seven day trial. I am heavily testing it out, revising “The Moon Cried Blood” – as you probably know “The Moon Cried Blood” is available for free download on May 5th (Cinco de Mayo). The new version won’t be available yet then, but I am working on it.
The Summer of Editing
The goal is to finish a third edition of “Solitude” and a second edition of “The Moon Cried Blood” and “Warmth.” The reason is to address some grammar issues that have been found by my more observant readers. In Self Publishing, you can’t expect to get the level of editing a mainstream published work has without putting a good amount of money into your project (see above). I spent last year putting my profit (which was about $50 a month then) back into proofreading for the books and they still need work.
With “Solitude” I was so fortunate as to have an editor on board, but the amount of time we were able to spend on the first half was greater than the second.
At this point, I’m not looking to make any major changes here. It’s just proofreading and copy editing.
The types of editing: http://www.gramlee.com/blog/different-types-of-copy-editing-services/
The reason? I feel so distracted by issues with the first books that it’s causing me writer’s block, and I want to free my mind to focus on “Disillusionment”.
Sumiko Saulson 