You Need an Editor: Grammarian fails

Hi everybody, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. All month long, we’re talking about editing. Yeah, I know it’s something that we talk about a lot, but that doesn’t make it any less important. In fact, I think the amount of time I spend talking about editing should show you just how important it really is. Editing is one of those things every single writer needs to know about, inside and out, and that’s what we’re doing today. We’re talking editing, for all those who haven’t been edited yet. And for those of you who have, I think you might just learn something about the editing process, in general.

You Need an Editor: Grammarian fails

We writers like to think of ourselves as the best grammarians in the world. I know we do, because I’m one of us. *wink wink* We like to think that we’ve gone over our manuscript enough times that we don’t have any errors, that there couldn’t possibly be any errors, because we’re such grammarians that we know what we’re doing every step of the way, every moment of the day, every word we type. And we would be wrong. If you haven’t come to that revelation yet, I’m sorry to burst your bubble.

I know you’ve spent a lot of time in editing your manuscript. I know you did. Especially if you’ve been reading my blog over time, and you’ve followed my advice. You know that you need to have edited your manuscript several times, before you decide how you want to publish your book. You know that. And I know you’ve put in all the time and effort to make it as good as you can. But I also know you’ve missed something.

There’s a really good suggestion out there on the interwebs, for writers who are editing their manuscripts. It’s to get a program that’ll read your manuscript aloud to you, so you can see how it flows, how it reads, and potentially catch some of those grammar issues. But even this method won’t guarantee that you’ve caught every grammar issue, by the time you go to print.

How do I know all this? How do I know that you’ve missed something along the way, and need someone else to edit your book?

Because I’m a writer and an editor, and I know this world from both sides. But that’s the cheating answer, isn’t it? I know because I’ve found a million grammar errors in self-published books (and several in books from Penguin Random House, too), books that make me cringe to the point that I’ve great difficulty reading self-published indie authors, because I’m afraid I’ll sit down to read and find my brain working to edit the book rather than enjoy the story—and that, my dear authors, is the very last thing you want your readers to deal with.

You need an editor, because you want your readers to enjoy your story, and not be distracted by the grammar issues you’ve missed. You need an editor, because one mind on their own can’t possibly catch every spelling error, missed comma, incorrect punctuation, and incorrect word use in a single manuscript. It’s just not possible, especially for the mind who wrote it, the mind who knows how it’s supposed to read (and so, automatically reads it as it should be read). You need an editor, because you’re not perfect.

At the very least, I implore you to hire a proofreader. If you can’t afford full-on editing yet, that’s fine. I know how budgets go. But at least save up to have a proofreader or copyeditor go through your manuscript to make sure you’ve removed as many grammar issues as possible. Please. Do it for me. Do it for you. Do it for everyone who will ever read your book.

[love]

{Rani Divine}