A week or so ago I asked here if £3900 was a bit stiff for editorial services. It seems everyone thought it was. in her defense she is one of the services used my publishers to knock work into shape before they go to print, but there you are. Anyway I was chatting with an author friend this week and he said in passing that his mother always reads his work to him so he can edit as she tells him where it needs it. I know obvious when you know. My mistake was always being the reader until this week when I managed to pull my wife away from her caseload for a while to read the M.S. out and edit as she read, she;s good! I do the typing and she does the clever bit, we have spent a few hours and are nearly at the end of chapter one, the sentence structure and punctuation is so different now and readable by other people, the important bit is that other people can read it of course. Yes it's obvious once you know but I didn't think about it because I am too close to the book, so anyone else who like me hasn't thought of doing it that way, then get someone who is brilliant at English and save a load of cash. I felt I had to post this just in case I'm not the only dim writer who comes on here.
Regards Paul G
Adrian you are correct about effort, I think all the hours we put in at all times of the day and night shows the effort, unfortunately if effort would get someone to want to read our work we would all have a following. Hey ho, we have to get the English correct too. But thank you for all your encouragement whenever you have replied to my posts, it is always appreciated. Paul.
Thanks for your comments people. The reading aloud to yourself and to someone else only solves part of the editing process it needs someone who is a reader and has a high standard of English.The problem with asking friends to read the work is they don't always understand you are looking for the faults and they so often will say what "they think" you as a writer "want" to hear, "Wow that was so good I don't know how you think of all those plots etc", of course that's not what we want, wives on the other hand can be truthful... Again my thanks and regards Paul G
Thanx Paul for sharing. I also do it with my sis. she helps me edit my work too.
I also read out loud, to catch the early mistakes, before asking her to do her bit.
Thanx so much.