Daily Archives: July 16, 2014

Jul 16 2014

The Lazy Writing Phenomenon

Thanks to Amazon’s ‘instant’ publication feature for Kindle, more and more people are jumping on the author band wagon. While it has been a god-send for those authors committed to producing the absolute best work they have to offer, the ease of uploading a Word file and becoming an insta-author has caused a massive influx of mediocre drivel that has caused many, many readers to boycott SPAs completely.

And who could blame them? Gone are the days when books were re-written, proofread, and edited within an inch of their lives. Gone too, it appears, is any set of standards or dignity when it comes to producing quality work. People are no longer enlisting the help of professional editors to help them clean up the mistakes, develop their writing style, and polish the work so that it flows smoothly from beginning to end. It’s the lazy man’s way of writing, and anything goes.

These days any old thing will do, from poorly edited train wrecks with shifting tenses, wrong word usage, missing words, and typographical errors to poorly written pieces that are hallmarked as a ‘writer’s’ first attempts evident by the sheer number of errors, lack of any discernable syntax, no plot or character development, and zero writing style. The entire self-publishing craze has left the literary world awash in a sea of utter garbage, and thanks to such atrocities as Fifty Shades, even the formerly noble art of writing erotic romance has given way to stories and novels that read like badly directed D-rated porn flicks. More and more people are pushing ‘publish’ on the first thing that pops into their heads, leaving readers wondering what on earth happen to the art of the written word.

The entire process has made it quite an ordeal for professional authors who value their reputation and stake their name and their success on their ability to produce a well crafted piece to rise up above all the false advertisements and astroturfing to get their names out there. For those who choose to NOT stoop to the level of the other wannabe writers plaguing Amazon and GoodReads, it is becoming increasingly harder to rise up above all the fakery. Professional indie authors are being forced to either see their works fail miserably while all the other drivel gets snatched off the proverbial shelves, or begin participating in the same under-handed, sneaky marketing gimmicks that the less-than-scrupulous writers are doing.

It seems that the vast majority of the literary world has been reduced to little more than half-assed words slung at a page. It’s degrading as an author who takes pride in her work to be lumped in the same category as some of these people. Being a writer has always been a profession that was looked down on by the rest of the world, as if we were somehow less of an artist, as if our work did not count. Many of us have to work full time jobs because writing doesn’t pay well enough to cover the bills or feed our kids, and yet those of us who continue to take pride in our work and are dedicated to producing a quality product are being shoved further and further down the literary pole because readers simply can’t find a good indie book. It’s sickening, disheartening, and worst of all, it’s unfair to readers to constantly swindle them out of money by allowing fake reviews to trick them into thinking they are getting a professional product when all they are really getting is someone’s latest attempt to cash in on the whole business.

So where does that leave us? For readers, LEAVE REVIEWS. This simply cannot be stressed enough. If you come across something that isn’t suited to be used in the bottom of your cat’s litter box, then LEAVE A REVIEW. When you come across a great read, then LEAVE A REVIEW. Stop being passive about the whole thing while moving on to the next book. SPEAK UP.

In time, when enough reviews have been left that attest to the true quality of the writing, the fake reviews will no longer apply and readers will stop buying. Eventually the problem with badly written self-published books will take care of itself, allowing the good writers to once again be noticed and purchased. But that will only happen if readers stand up for themselves. STOP just assuming that the problem will go away on its own. Never underestimate the power of the review. It has caused many a writer to stop writing, and when used properly, it can stop the influx of drivel from taking over our lives.

Jul 16 2014

Why a Professional Editor is a MUST for Even the Most Diligent Indie Author

In all the years I have under my belt as a writer, I have humble beginnings as a proofreader and editor. Growing up, most girls had babysitting jobs or paper routes. Given my class ranking in high school, I made extra money by proofreading and typing up term papers, book reports, and oftentimes writing them as well.

During those first ten years or so of my writing ‘career,’ I sent out dozens upon dozens of query letters and samples of my manuscript. I received back just as many rejection letters, many of them with advice on how to improve my writing. Over the years, I received a lot of good advice, a lot of bad advice, and a lot of advice that just didn’t seem relevant or hold true for me as a writer. Some of it I took to heart, some of it I took with a grain of salt, and some of it, the really hard lessons, it took me years before I finally grasped the gravity of what those well-meaning editors were trying to get across to me.

One of the most important pieces of advice I ever received is also the one piece of advice that it took me the longest to finally understand and to accept as a writing truth, and that is the ultimate need for a very good, high quality, professional editor. With so many years spent as a freelance editor, I know full well how to edit and proofread a piece of work. Add in the thirty plus years spent writing and proofreading my own work, and all that experience has only honed my skills as both a writer and an editor.

But I was naïve when it came to my own work. I thought that editors were meant to be nothing more than spell checks with fingers, someone who picked up what MS Word could not, like correct word usage and punctuation. I could easily do this on my own, and have always put my own works through dozens upon dozens of rewrites and edits. I saw absolutely no reason why anyone with a strong grasp of the English language would want to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars doing what anyone with a bit of patience could do on their own. Besides, I had read enough carbon copies of books that all sounded like they had been written by the same boring writer to know that editors could do real damage to the writing style of the original author, stripping it out to the point where even the action scenes seemed dull and lifeless. Who the hell wanted THAT for their story?

It was not until the self-publication wave hit Amazon that I realized just how very, very wrong I was in that mind set.

Editors do more than just find typos. Those that are good at what they do, do so much more than merely find typographical errors. Strong, professional editors help out the syntax of the sentences in the story, correcting grammatical mistakes that go beyond subject/verb agreement and shifting tenses. They actually help the author hone their writing style, make sure the storyline and the writing itself flows smoothly and is consistent throughout. They also make sure that the writing is actually good and does not read like something that the author just slapped down with never a rewrite or second thought about it.

A quality editor would never let something like “I’m already hard…..My cock would like to say ‘hello’ to her kitty….I slap her, make her mine…. She purrs, I smile….I whip my dick out, make her take it” ever see the light of day. This amounts to nothing but incredibly lazy writing by someone who has obviously never written anything before in their life. Even when writing erotica and porn, there is a right way to write it so that it sounds good, and a wrong way. A good editor would never have let this be published, and for good reason. It’s just plain horrible writing, lazy, the work of someone who obviously doesn’t care about the art of writing or their reputation as a career writer. It is just drivel, a vomit of words onto the page with no real plot line, no writing style, and no real care as to how the story and characters are presented.

And herein lays the problem with the self-pubbing industry. More and more people are hitting the ‘publish’ button on Amazon on the first thing they slap down on their computers and call it a novel. It’s not going through professional editors, if they bother to send it to any type of editor at all. Most self-pubbed authors are just doing it themselves or having friends, family, or a few beta readers with absolutely no credentials as editors look through and try to catch mistakes. It results in the above drivel, badly written ‘erotica’ and other stories that read like D-rated porn movies.

As a writer, I take great pride in my work. I spend months cultivating plotlines and characters, bringing them to life in my own mind before committing them to paper. I want to be taken seriously as a professional writer, which means that I take the extra time and the extra expense to produce a quality product the first time around. If you think you can bypass this and ‘save up’ to buy professional editing services once you ‘sell a few books,’ then consider this: readers RARELY re-read a novel, and if they do, it is usually only once. There are simply too many new books being produced that they want to read to go back to anything but a super-favorite novel and read it a second time. With that said, the chances of a reader going back and re-reading an indie published novel that has had the grammatical errors ‘fixed’ after they have purchased the book is virtually non-existent. Having a quality product for them the first time can mean the difference between the reader either returning the book/leaving a bad review, and them recommending the book to fellow readers. In addition, publishing a poor quality novel can stay with you for years, resulting in loss of readers who were unimpressed with your first work and refuse to take a chance on you producing better quality writing at a later date.

In the literary world, there really is NOT a second chance to make a first impression. So you have to ask yourself, is producing sub-par books something you really want to be known for as a writer? Is it worth your reputation as a professional or worth risking losing potential readers? In the end, no one, not even Anne Rice, can risk producing anything but the very best, quality work possible. Bottom line, if you expect to be treated like a professional writer, then you must produce and sell a professional quality piece. Otherwise, that imperfection could very well stay with you through the entirety of your writing career, a testiment to either your Success, or your Failure.