Editing

You know how I am always writing about the waiting game. Nathan Bransford just did a post titled "Waiting is the Worst Part." It was good to see that someone else hates to wait, too.

I've been busy editing, again!
Seems like that's all I do lately, but I don't mind. I love going through my manuscripts and 'trying' to get it just right.

I think my middle grade is finally ready to go out into the world. I changed the title again. It has went from being "The Family Treasure" to "The Honeysuckle Mystery" to "The Family Secret."

It has been critiqued by my writing group, but it is amazing what you miss when you do a final once over. I thought I'd caught most mistakes, but I've come to the conclusion that you never catch all your mistakes. I hope the publishers understand this, too, and don't throw it to the slush pile for little grammar errors.

I single spaced it and ran it off on the printer, read through it and made changes. I printed it again. This time on the back side of my 'chicken scratched' copy to save on paper. (I used to drive my writer's group crazy when I did that, but now I've found that some of them are doing the same thing).

I read it again and still found errors. How could I have missed these? I had the letter '2' at least twice where I should have spelled it out. Had 'mom' capitalized when it shouldn't have been. Took out a few 'he said' and 'she said' tags, etc., that I could do without. I checked for consistency, in one place the dad had blue eyes and in another place he had dark eyes. I guess he could have had 'dark blue' eyes, but I changed it anyway.

And should I mention the double spaces after sentences? I guess that's what I get for being from the generation that used typewriters. We were always told to double space after a sentence. It is a habit very hard to break. I did the 'find' search for double spaces and I cannot tell you the number of double spaces it found after my sentences. "Oh, my goodness," as Shirley Temple used to say.

I know these type of errors are little things, but I'm amazed I didn't find them earlier.

I think it's time to send it out, my house is suffering. You see, I love writing, but I hate housework. My house looks like a poor abandoned soul that has been neglected and left to gather dust and clutter. It's a good thing we don't have company.

Do these little things drive you crazy when you edit. Do you find things that you think someone else must have typed in your manuscript when you weren't looking?