A plea on behalf of editors
I enjoy editing for other people. However, I think I may have to stop, as no matter how often I edit someone, they seem not to learn from their mistakes. I don’t mean to say that I’m a perfect writer (or editor); I think I know the basic rules well enough and most of what I’m correcting is, in fact, technical errors in punctuation or grammar. But why are they repeated? When my work is edited, and especially if a repeated mistake is pointed out, then I make an effort to be on the lookout for it in future stories so that I can eliminate the problem. Quite honestly, I’m tired of correcting the same mistakes. Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone use an outside editor? Shouldn’t all of the writing process, including editing, be a learning process or opportunity?
I’m going to sound ancient and elitist here, but I think a major problem is that children no longer get taught about the grammar of their own language. So as adults, people are using a tool they don’t really know very well. Of course, they can have a perfectly good conversation in the language, but they don’t think about their use of it critically.
Punctuation is difficult because it serves so many functions for us. A comma indicates a pause, but it also plays a part in structuring the information delivered – when enclosing sub-clauses, for instance.
There are also style preferences. The British tend to use many more commas than American writers. And having had an American editor for an anthology, I noticed she had an allergy to semi-colons. In fact, I think I need to write a post on semicolons. People are scared to use them because they don’t know the rules of their usage. I love semicolons; they are subtle and allow gradation of meaning within a sentence.
However, all that aside, my disappointment is that editors don’t use nearly a heavy enough hand. I don’t need proof-reading, I need someone to cut half the crap out of my writing
You probably have a point about how grammar is or isn’t taught. Being on the ancient side myself (ha ha), I only know what I was taught, and I had to diagram sentences!
If I showed you what I edited, you’d cry. I sent my mother a sample (mom being no slouch in the English area) and she thought it was made up, that no one after fourth grade could write this badly. We pondered dyslexia as a possibility. I kid you not that when I first began editing this person, I inquired if English was their first or second language.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing is after a piece is edited and returned, then posted on a site, it receives wonderful feedback, despite the mistakes that remain. Well that, and as I said, the next file contains the same mistakes.
I think some people (and apparently they found me) regard editors like someone who corrects a test. You fix the problems, and they may give it a cursory glance, but since the editor did the work, not them, they figure it doesn’t matter and the editor will do it all for them again.
Editors, in my opinion, should catch typos, make suggestions on punctuation if necessary, but be more involved in the flow and continuity of a story. Removing unnecessary words, as you say, RG. Being a grammar checker shouldn’t be the main part of the job.
However, it’s free; so I’ve only myself to blame for wasting my time.
Yes, do go on about semi-colons; it’s about time someone did.
I, for one, do try to learn from my mistakes!
I’m hoping to improve my writing;punctuation, grammar, et al; by being involved with this lovely group!
OMG, Eve, I’ve had the same thing happen to me countless times! Being the editor over at Erotica Republic I have been shocked by the amount of pure garbage that some people send to me to be posted on the site. These people have no business writing ANYTHING, most of all fiction to be read publicly over the internet by people around the world.
I once had an author, who I knew was very popular on another erotic story site, send me a story that was so poorly written I wrote him this sincere email back saying how I commended him for attempting to write a story in English when it was clearly not his first language. Well, it turned out that English was his first language and he called me a bitch for insulting his work. I was utterly shocked. There wasn’t a decent sentence in that whole story and it contained 4000 words!!!
In that case I blame the readers who continued to read that author’s garbage and reward him with postivie feedback and high votes. Who are these readers? What happened to demanding quality in sex stories???
I’ve also spent hours correcting stupid grammar errors and choppy narrative flow. I sent long emails to the authors suggesting ways to improve their writing, only to receive the same old trash in their next story. It is disheartening to say the least.
The only explanation I can come up with is that there are authors out there who simply do not give a damn. They don’t respect the craft of writing and they certainly don’t respect their readers. I hate these people.
But the people I hate even more are the talented writers out there who write professionally but when it comes to their “hobby” of writing sex stories under a secret penname they think it’s OK to ignore all the rules. It’s ony smut, they tell themselves, who gives a fuck?
I give a fuck, you assholes!!!
Just because I like to read sex stories doesn’t mean I’m willing to tolerate poorly written shit you wrote in 5 minutes on your Blackberry so you could jack off in a public washroom.
I’ll stop there because I’m getting angry.
I hope you’re over being angry, or close to it.
I, too, am amazed at the poor quality of writing, sometimes even after editing, that is rewarded with comments along the lines of “The best story I’ve ever read!” Occasionally, when I try (privately) to call an author’s attention to a problem, I’m met with a “this is what I was taught” or “this is what I’ve seen elsewhere.” This obviously gives them permission to continue on, and since the readers don’t care, they have no incentive to change.
It is frustrating, I can only agree.
I also find it a bit baffling. What happened to doing your proper, correct best because it’s a reflection of you? (Lost with the anonymity of the internet, I guess.) Why not look at the authors you admire (assuming they write properly) and aspire to meet that standard? Even with anonymity, I can’t imagine putting up one of my stories without going over it at least once.
I must be SO old.
No, Eve, it’s not because you are “so old,” it’s because you are so good. You care about your writing and you care about your readers and for that reason I asked you for permission to publish your work. Good writers deserve to be rewarded for good work. You’re making money while those other authors who don’t give a damn for their reputations or their readers will forever be stuck writing for free. The cream will always rise to the top and the other…well, it will stay at the bottom where it belongs.
Regarding writers who don’t give a damn when it comes to writing sex: this is unforgivable and, I’m sorry to say, shows their shallow understanding of the craft of writing.
Almost every adult who reads a sex story has had sex and knows all about how it works. Sex is, in some ways, an ‘everyday’ occurrence.
Both Ernest Hemingway and Mark Twain talked of the greater challenge of writing the ‘everyday,’ in order to bring its subtleties to life, and make it seem both new and yet familiar, surpassing the superficial.
Sex is extremely hard to write well, but I think because it’s so easy to just focus on the insertion of tab A into slot B, writers have a tendency to forgo finesse and technical precision when it comes to the actual writing.
But I see repeated mistakes in a lot of the roughs that I read too. And usually, even after I’ve handed back the first few chapters with the errors corrected and highlighted, I see the same ones in the next few chapters that I get handed. Small mistakes that slip through their own re-reading is understandable, but glaring ones that they could have fixed with “ctrl+r” can get frustrating.
Honestly, if the errors were (mostly) confined to the sex scenes, I’d be less concerned.
I’ve read stuff where if I didn’t know what the author *meant*, and that from previous conversations/experience, I would be completely lost. The sex scenes in these cases are often so badly written as to be confusing.
Yes, it’s the repeated errors that are easily fixed with a search, or even just paying attention, that make it such a frustrating exercise.
I’m going to write as a (mostly) reformed sinner here. For the longest time, maybe the first six or seven years of posting erotica online, I was pretty much the only audience I considered. I knew people read my stories, and got positive feedback from some, but I never worried about being porny (which some of my stuff absolutely is (bad adverb! (which reminds me we need a post about nested parentheses))), or good writing, or real craft. Hell, I didn’t use the term ‘craft’ in this sense until last year. I wonder if, had I encountered Eve and Emma back then, whether I would have been able to receive criticisms with truly open ears. I might have been a waste of their time then, but perhaps not forever.
So, I guess, I have a plea on behalf of the larval writers. However annoying we can be sometimes, however slow we learn, please, please don’t give up on all of us.
Unless we call you bitches, in which case we’re just angling to be beaten.
Ha ha. I have often fantasized about beating that author who called me a bitch. Oh, how I would have loved to print out his shitty story, show up at his house and stuff it down his throat. I would then make him read a fourth grade grammar textbook outlining what a subject, verb and predicate are while I whipped him with a garden hose.
I must stop now as I am becoming aroused.