Lazy Fingers & Cognitive Assumptions

Every writer faces the task of proofreading at every stage of the writing process. We sometimes do this onerous task at the end of a writing session or we wait until the entire work in progress is commented to paper or even to the last minute before the novel is published.

Competent typists are usually accurate to within a very small percentage point. Two-finger typists, commonly called the “hunt and peck” variety can actually be better at accuracy but much slower. Whichever we are, we occasionally make assumptions about the manual aspects of producing a written work.

Last year, I happily published my seventeenth novel of twenty written works with my name on the cover. While considering a new cover and further research into that period of American history, I reviewed a small section of the novel and—shock horror—even after careful and intense proofreading of the “Advanced Reader’s Copy,” I discovered a typographical error.

Not much further along, I found another error—the “My brain thought this word but my fingers typed that one” kind. During proofreading, the brain often wins the argument, making the assumption that the word typed was the word thought.

With more than one such error, I began at the beginning of the novel, making note of the errors in pencil and marking the pages with strips of multi-colored plastic stickies (my stash of these useful writers’ tools are well-used).

The whole process of re-proofing an already published novel taught me yet another lesson: Proofread more than once and proofread backwards. If you’re self-publishing, asking a friend or paying a professional editor are options. Even so, there will be the occasional missing letter, word or punctuation mark.

In that instance, take the philosophical approach: No one is perfect.

Attack of the Typo Gremlins

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

The Husband says I’m weird. I prefer fanciful. That does not, however, change the fact there are some things out there that we cannot explain and which we definitely cannot control. In other words, my friends, the Typo Gremlin is real. He’s out there and he’s both malign and sneaky. I give it the masculine pronoun, as it is changeable, sometimes irrational and very dictatorial. It doesn’t matter what you do – edit, re-edit, get multiple professional editors galore and still that sneaky little devil will get around everything and embarrass you.

When I was still a child I started working in my parents’ advertising agency. Even then I was the picky sort, and one of my jobs was to proof-read the ads we put out. Being commercially oriented instead of consumer, our ads were both word-dense and generally boring, so that was a time-consuming job. Of course I wasn’t the only proof-reader – before an ad went out just about everyone in the office had looked it over – but in spite of that the Typo Gremlin would still have his way. We’d see the mistake – usually in 30 point type – right after the bazillion copy print run was completed.

When I was most definitely not a child I was editor in chief of first one multi-magazine publishing group and then later another; wherever I was, though, didn’t make a difference. The Typo Gremlin always managed to find me. The first group I worked for had been plagued with a slipshod editor who apparently didn’t care what the magazines looked like. I had been brought on board to bring the group up to snuff. Needless to say, it was not always a pleasant process, but after an issue or two I had pretty much everything looking better and under control. Except the Typo Gremlin.

The first issue of my editorship was a disaster; the second one was much better and by the third we were putting out a product I could be proud of. From the first day I instituted a law that even after our proofreaders had looked over everything no board went to the printer unless it had my initials on it.

And in spite of that the sneaky little Typo Gremlin still made his presence known, dancing through every issue, sometimes leaving one, or maybe two mistakes – though by the second issue they were usually little ones. Being a firm believer in turning a weakness into a strength I finally gave in and made a partner of the wee beastie, running a permanent contest that whoever found a typo in any one of our magazines (that group published three) would win a prize. The prizes were little – a yearly subscription, one of the little booklets we produced on everything from gardening to fortunetelling – but our readership soared and our ad revenue went through the roof. It was so successful that I carried the idea to my next publishing group, where we had the same results.

So, as odd as it sounds, your enemy can become your friend if you play things right. Even a Typo Gremlin. 

Just To Be Sure...

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

At long last it’s here. The release day of your new book. The cover is gorgeous, the print PDF and the electronic versions are pristine. All the editing passes and revisions are finally over with and each sentence has been polished until all of them shine like diamonds. You’ve got your excerpts ready for publicity, the various sizes of your cover are waiting to be posted, you’ve done your keywords and metadata for release… all that awaits is for you to push the ‘Publish’ button.

And your finger hovers hesitantly over your mouse as you frantically search your mind and your manuscript for anything you might have forgotten. Stress brings a sheen of perspiration to your forehead as your clicking finger starts to tremble. Remember the old saw “Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies glow”? Well, just about now I always start to glow like a horse.

This is it. This is what you’ve been working for for so long. But is your precious book ready? Really ready? Maybe just one more check… just to be sure?

Believe me, you can ‘just one more check’ yourself into total stasis. I know. I’ve done it. Especially when the book is a very important one.

You see, that’s where I am right now. One year ago this month The Husband and I started out for Egypt, where we had been invited to stay at an archaeological dig house. The excavation director is a very dear friend and had suggested I might want to set a murder mystery in this lovely old house built in 1906 by an English Egyptologist named Somers Clarke that is now the excavation headquarters. Of course we went and though we have been to Egypt several times it was just about the most magical trip of my life.

The resultant book is A KILLING AT EL KAB, and it’s going to be released in the middle of this month – almost to the day we arrived at El Kab. As I am an avowed Egyptomane, this is one of the most important books of my entire life.

And I want it perfect. I have driven both my cover artist and formatter almost to madness with my pickiness and these last few weeks The Husband has been positively grateful to escape to his job every morning. I have been through the manuscript and the various formatted copies so many times that I can recount great chunks of copy from memory. Yet still I hesitate to hit the ‘publish’ button. I tell myself it’s because I haven’t yet received the paperback proofs.

Yeah.

More likely it’s because I know that somewhere deep in the manuscript there lingers a malign typo, waiting in hiding until the book is available to the world before it makes itself known…

Maybe I should go through the book again… Just to be sure.

What About Self Publishing?

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

On one of my loops there has been for some time a very spirited discussion about self-publishing – some correspondents are very outspoken that it should just ‘go away and let real publishing take over again.’ Some admit to being confused or uninformed. Some – including me – are quite vocal that self pubbing is not only here to stay, but that it should be. Because I feel so strongly about this, I have taken my response to this somewhat contentious thread and put it here.

For all those who think that ‘self publishing should just go away and let real publishing take over again’ I ask... Why? Self publishing IS real publishing, with the added benefits of freedom and due rewards for the writer. It gets the story from the writer's mind into the reader's hand, and that's the rock-bottom basis of publishing. For centuries writers have been treated as at best the red-headed-stepchildren of the publishing industry, at worst nothing more than a necessary evil. While there are the mega-bestsellers who receive fantastic amounts, the majority of writers are paid least and last, which is egregiously illogical as without them the publishing industry would not exist. Trad publishers are notorious for keeping authors in the dark about sales figures and give them little or no input into covers, marketing (when any marketing is done at all) and basically tell writers "Give us the books we will accept, allow us to shape them, take what we give you without any questions and go away."

Self publishing has changed all that. The author is now in charge and is finally getting paid in proportion to their contribution. It's more work for them, but the rewards are worth it. Is there dreck in self-publishing? Of course. Freedom is always messy, but that's no reason to condemn a new process when there are so many benefits. Self-publishing is the essence of freedom - let the market, ie the reader, decide what they want.

If self pubbing were not good for the writer, why would so many trad pubbed writers be switching? They want commensurate rewards for their work. They want control. They want to know what is happening and be able to try new things. In return, every real writer I know puts more care into their self pubbed books than most traditional publishers. Check a trad pubbed book (especially one of the Big 5) against a professional writer's self pubbed one. I’ll bet you there are more mistakes - typo, formatting, etc. - in the trad pubbed. The professional self pubbing writers I know hire editors, formatters and artists, many of whom have quit the big houses and gone into freelancing. They too want to make more money. And what is wrong with that?

Should everyone self publish? Obviously not. But - ! Every writer should have the freedom to choose whether they want to self publish or not.

Self pubbing is also good for the reader. Self pubbing gives readers the freedom to choose what kind of books they want. Niche publishing flourishes with self pubbing. Specialized stories or cross-genre books, each pulling too small an audience to interest the big boys are now available. Readers can now choose the specific type of stories they want to read and not be forced to choose from just what is profitable for the trad publishers or acceptable to their gatekeepers. The reader is now in control, just as is the writer.

It's too late to put things back the way they were, even if the trad houses were suddenly to wise up and do everything right. The genie is out of the bottle. If Amazon - the 600 lb gorilla of self-publishing - were to decide to stop putting out books for self pubbed authors or to change their payment schedules some other profit-minded entrepreneur would step in.

And what about the dreck, the garbage books? There have always been garbage books, even under the big trad pubbing umbrella. Yes, there are more now, but that will pass. Millions of people have always thought they could write a book better than the one they're reading, and a very few of them were right. Many try and most never even finish their manuscript. Of those who do many go right on to publication, ready or not. In the old days pre-self pubbing, these tyros were mainly caught by the gatekeepers. They either quit writing or learned to write well - and to conform to the Procrustean bed of the trad pubbers. Now they can string together as many words as they like, call it a book, put it out and then be shocked when it doesn't bring them instant success and fortune. Then they either quit writing or buckle down and learn to write.

Is the system perfect? No, of course not. No system ever is, but with the option of self pubbing, the new gatekeepers are the writers and the readers themselves. And that's the way it should be.