Category: reading

Can You Be Objective About Your Own Writing?

Can You Be Objective About Your Own WritingCongratulations! A fantastic story now resides on your hard drive. You put it aside for a while (as all the writing gurus suggest) and then you come back to it for your first round of edits. Days/weeks/months later, you complete that massive task, and wow! An even more fantastic story is ready for introduction to the world.

You share it with your family and friends—and they all rave about your storytelling talent. You share it with your critique group and beta readers, and they offer some useful constructive criticism that sends you back to your computer with a renewed vision for your WIP. You toil for many more hours, tweaking this, deleting that, rewriting entire scenes and characters, and finally—thankfully—you finish.

Sorry, you aren’t quite ready to publish that masterpiece yet. In the course of all that planning, writing, and revising, you’ve lost your objectivity about your work. But never fear, because I’m here to help you!

Don’t be your own worst enemy by losing your objectivity about your writing. #writetip #editing #selfpub Share on X

Let’s examine two reasons you aren’t objective about your own writing and why you need to hire an editor if you are serious about publishing your work:

1.  You are too close to your own writing.

You’ve poured your heart and soul into your work. As a serious writer, you are invested in honing your craft. Even after you self-edit, there might be issues you haven’t addressed because you aren’t aware of them. Are there holes in your arguments? Are your introduction and conclusion as strong as they can be? Are your characters three-dimensional? Is your story slow to start, or does it move too quickly? An editor will help you by identifying issues that turn a flat story into one that everyone talks about.

Author Elizabeth Hein addresses this in “Questions”:

In the process of bringing a story to fruition, the author can lose sight of what the reader needs to know when. We are inside the story trying to push it forward. The reader experiences the story one page at a time. They need to understand what is happening at that point.”

Don’t be your own worst enemy by losing your objectivity about your writing—add a professional editor to your team. You wouldn’t dream of interviewing for a job without taking a shower, brushing your teeth, and making sure your socks match; why would you consider creating your legacy as a writing professional without hiring someone to edit your manuscript for errors, omissions, and weak writing?

2.  Your mind sees what it wants to see.

Your brain has trouble realizing that “weak” is wrong when you meant “week,” or that you’ve received a “compliment,” not a “complement.” Every writer has a personal pattern of error, such as using the same word too frequently or beginning sentences with dangling modifiers, and those are errors you won’t even notice—but an editor will.

Author Alison Neale puts it this way in “Professional Editing?”:

There are thousands of self-published books out there and you want to stand out from the crowd. Editing may be an expense you don’t feel you can justify – but when it makes the difference between a handful of sales and a best seller, it’s an expense you shouldn’t avoid.”

I won’t sugarcoat this: editing isn’t cheap. Or let me rephrase that: quality editing isn’t cheap. But how much will it cost you to publish a poorly constructed story full of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors? Ask other authors for references. Check out websites, interview prospective editors on the telephone, and ask for a sample edit.

So a professional writer (that would be YOU) needs a professional freelance editor (that would be ME) to navigate those too-close-for-objectivity minefields in writing. Your expertise is writing; let me show you how my editorial expertise can help you take your writing to the next level. Contact me at cyjohnson5580@gmail.com for a no-obligation quote and sample edit today.

Happy Writing!

—Candace

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Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Related articles:

I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Editor. Or Do I? (changeitupediting.com)

A Little Editing Makes a BIG Difference (changeitupediting.com)

Show, Don’t Tell

When I read a post on someone else’s blog that explains a concept in a way that makes me think I wish I’d said that, I just have to share it here. This article by Oliver Gray is a wonderful exposition of literary devices you can use to help you bring your imagery to life. I hope you’ll visit Oliver’s blog at Literature and Libation to read the entire article.

Literary devices you can use to help you bring your imagery to life. #writetip #amwriting Share on X

Imagery innervates your writing, takes it beyond yawing generalities and into the visceral, blood-soaked details. It is how, using your words and syntax and imagination, you create the world of your story in your reader’s mind. It engages all of the senses: vibrant, blinding colors; pungent, wafting smells; coarse, sandy textures; plunking, rolling sounds; sweet, buttery tastes.

The piece of advice I’m sure you’ve heard even more times than “Cliche? Run away!” is “Show, don’t tell.” It’s another easy one to regurgitate into the awaiting mouths of nutrient-starved writers, but it is often misunderstood.

The idea is that you need to show an emotion or character trait or some other important facet without just telling your reader explictly what that thing is. It’s the difference between, “Carol fidgeted, her eyes darting towards the door ever few minutes” and “Carol was nervous.”

What makes the first one showing and the second one telling? Images. Imagery. Figurative language. Pictures drawn with words and forcefully placed into the reader’s brain through his eyeballs.

It’s that simple. Showing comes down to using effective imagery in your writing. There are no other magic methods or secret spells or ridiculous riddles. If you’re getting a lot of feedback saying, “show, don’t tell!” with no other qualifications, re-interpret that as, “I couldn’t really picture this correctly, and it gave me pause.

When you start replacing abstracts and generalizations with concrete images that your reader can easily turn into a video of the action in their head, the problem of showing verses telling suddenly, as if by some divine writing miracle, disappears.”

This is just an excerpt from Oliver’s longer article, and it’s packed with great information so I hope you’ll visit and read more here.

Happy Writing!

—Candace

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8 Comparisons of Goodreads and LibraryThing

logo4_mediumWith the recent purchase of Goodreads by Amazon, I thought a side-by-side look at Goodreads and LibraryThing (in which Amazon also holds part ownership) might be helpful to anyone considering one of these reader sites.goodreads-logo

Below is the first of two parts of an article by Book Riot staff editor Amanda Nelson; the link to Part Two is at the bottom of the first article. Together they cover:

  1. adding books to your library
  2. book recommendations
  3. stats
  4. user interface
  5. discussions and groups
  6. reviews
  7. author interactions
  8. other notable stuff and things

And a final summary of the two sites. If you belong to either site, or you are considering joining one or the other, you’ll want to read both articles.

Goodreads v. LibraryThing- Part One.

Happy Reading!

—Candace

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Join Me on the Air

ID-10033526Through the magic of the Internet, you can hear yours truly chatting about writing and editing on Monday, April 1.

I’ll be the guest of author, personal development speaker, and radio host Raeleen Mautner, PhD, who has invited me to be her guest on The Art of Living Well. I had the privilege of editing Raeleen’s latest book, Lemons into Limoncello, which will be out on May 7 and is available now for preorder here, here, and wherever books are sold.LemonsLimoncello

The Art of Living Well is a fantastic show, and Raeleen is a seasoned professional. I, on the other hand, am more comfortable behind the scenes, so the idea of an hour-long radio interview is making me a little nervous—but I’ll do my best not to let that show. At least I don’t have to give a speech in front of a crowd . . . where I’d have to imagine the audience in their underwear (remember that old trick to overcome stage fright?).

Come to think of it, those of you on the East Coast of the US might actually be in your underwear at that time!

Seriously, we’ll be discussing aspects of writing and the editing process, so I hope you’ll tune in and listen. You can listen to a live stream from anywhere in the world. If you’re in Australia, I’ll help you go to sleep, since that will be 11pm your time. In the UK? Join me on your noon lunch hour. And if you’re anywhere else in the world, here’s a link to a time conversion site: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html.

I hope you’ll join Raeleen and me for what promises to be an entertaining and enlightening hour. See you there!

—Candace

“On Air” image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are E-Books and Accidental Discovery Mutually Exclusive?

I read this quote today on Jeff O’Neal’s blog Critical Linking:

Accidental Discovery

There’s an aspect to traditional books which is lost in even the best electronic reader, which is Accidental Discovery: I’m reading this or that, and leave it laying about the house, and you visit and see it, or you’re perusing my book-shelves to see what i’m up to, and find something which interests you. I’m a technologist, and i worry that this casual, accidental, and as you mention, social means of discovering by talking about books is threatened by devices which need to be explicitly searched in order to find out what they hold.”

How do you discover new books? #amreading #ebooks #bookworm Share on X

This got me thinking about how I discover books, and I realize there is some truth in this statement. I had company last weekend; the woman was reading a print copy of Gone Girl, so of course we began discussing it, and she offered to leave it for me when she finished. Our conversation led to a discussion about various authors and written dialogue;  when she said she’d never read anything by Jodi Picoult, I encouraged her to help herself to one of several books by Picoult that I have on my bookshelf.

So here are two cases of accidental discovery: we both now have the opportunity to read books we might not have “discovered” on our own.

The question is, would we have discovered these books if they had only been on our e-readers, cell phones, or tablets? I have to agree with the opening quote, that explicitly searching for something on an electronic device is a very different activity. Personally, I often ask people what they are reading on their Nooks, Kindles, or other e-readers, but I’ve never followed up with “What else do you have on your reader?”

What about you? I’d love to know how you discover books in this electronic age. And if you are an e-book reader, have you ever been queried about the books you have on it?

Happy Reading!

—Candace

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Why You Must Create a Compelling Book Description

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Question: What’s the most important piece of writing you’ll do once your book is complete?

Answer: The description of your book. No matter how well written your book is, no matter how great your author platform is, no matter how great your marketing plan is, if your promotional copy puts readers to sleep, you just lost a potential sale.

What you say about your book can be as important (and arguably even more important) that what you say inside your book.

What’s the most important piece of writing you’ll do once your book is complete? #selfpub #indieauthors Share on X

The product description you write for Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other product pages—even your own website—needs to be the best sales copy you can create. Whether readers are just browsing for a book to read or they’re looking for yours specifically (yay!), the interest and excitement you create in that product description will influence whether you gain another reader or not.

Continue reading “Why You Must Create a Compelling Book Description”

I Am So Honored!

Cindy PasqueleneImagine my surprise this morning when I found my name mentioned in a new blog post!

Cindy Pasquelene, who writes at The Writer Backblogger, was one of the winners of last week’s drawing for free editing. Cindy sent the first 1,500 words of her NaNoWriMo novel for my feedback, and . . .

See what Cindy had to say about the experience at The Writer Backblogger.

I spend some time every morning searching Twitter, blogs, and the Internet for interesting things to post on my Facebook page. If you aren’t already a fan, I hope you’ll check it out here.

My Red-Letter Day: Meeting Singer, Speaker, and Author LaDonna Gatlin

LaDonna Gatlin
Invitation to LaDonna Gatlin’s appearance

I had the most fun experience this week: I met LaDonna Gatlin, an author with whom I’ve been working since I first read her book proposal for The Song in You: Finding Your Voice, Redefining Your Life in the summer of 2011. If you had spent as much time on the telephone as LaDonna and I spent over the past eighteen months, you get to be pretty good friends . . . Continue reading “My Red-Letter Day: Meeting Singer, Speaker, and Author LaDonna Gatlin”

Beware of Snake-Oil Salesmen in the Editing Biz

In the past week I came across two websites that offer unusual editing services. Unusual isn’t bad, but in these particular cases, unusual is definitely NOT good for authors.editing

One of these companies is a membership site that proposes to save authors money on professional editing by trading editing with other members; in other words, you and another writer edit each other’s books, thereby eliminating the cost of having your manuscript professionally edited.

What’s wrong with that? Nothing, as long as you understand that the chances of having a professional edit your work are slim to none. In reality, this service is a beta-reader service, which is very useful in its own right—but let’s call it what it is. And it is no substitute for professional editing or proofreading.

How to NOT save money on professional editing costs. #writers #editing #amediting Share on X

“Oh, come ON, Candace,” I can hear you say, “I’ll still get editing, plus I can save hundreds of dollars on editing costs.” Continue reading “Beware of Snake-Oil Salesmen in the Editing Biz”

Media Alert: Angela Rose and PAVE

I absolutely LOVE to share good news, especially when it concerns friends and authors—and especially friends who are authors. One of the best parts of my job as a freelance editor is meeting people through my work who then become friends, which tends to happen a lot (lucky me)! So without further ado: Continue reading “Media Alert: Angela Rose and PAVE”