Switching between editor mode and creator mode

[slrogers]

In the process of publishing my first book myself, I realized that with the 650,000 symbols (letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.) in addition to the thousands of literary elements (characters, settings, conflicts, arcs, plots, sub-plots, emotions, ...) that even if I got 99.9% of it all perfect, it would still leave about a thousand errors. And with each error comes the possibility of kicking a reader out of the story (there might also be some that luckily add charm, which one runs the risk of removing through the editing process). In addition to this, my brain is able to compensate for errors far too easily, making it harder to see what problems exist in the book (which I hear is why even the best copy editors will probably only get about 80% of the grammar and spelling errors).

So I understand much better why even publishing companies with there teams of editors still leave a fair number of errors in books.

And while one perhaps shouldn't "look down" while setting such lofty ambitions of being in the top fraction of a percentile of authors just to be successful, I feel for those like Aaron Rayburn, author of The Shadow God ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Shadow-God-Aaron-Rayburn/dp/1418499757 ) who have the natorious reputation for being at the bottom of the barrel. A position that we, as authors, face taking up by putting ourselves out there for the full scrutiny of the world.

But I did always want to publish myself because I wanted to learn everything I could about everything involved with writing, and I'm glad that as a self-published author I am able to fix problems that are discovered as quickly as they are found.

The one thing, however, that I'm really struggling with at the moment (besides possibly a bit of stage fright) is now switching back to "creator mode" and turning off the internal editor so that I can write the next hundred thousand words. I think, with my first book, I've narrowed it down to as good as it's going to get. (Which is hopefully somewhere closer to J.K. Rowlings than Aaron Rayburn, but I know, realistically, is somewhere in between.) Perhaps it is in part because of the "stage fright" that I'm having a hard time focusing on creating the next story, which I want to be even more amazing than the first.

I think that The Deposed King makes it look too easy. I'm always amazed at how much he is able to do. I want to be more like that, but I feel stuck. How do you push forward and fall in love again with the writing? How do you keep the dream alive and still face all of the realistic problems that one must face to be successful?

I know that even James Patterson has his bad days (You've Been Warned was one of his that was at the bottom of the barrel). But as somebody new, like myself, how do you overcome the "you're not good enough" or decide that maybe this isn't for me? I'm not fishing for compliments (though I guess if you wanted to, I wouldn't mind a lot of more favorable reviews on Amazon  ). I want to hear what you do on your rough days to stay motivated and keep pumping out words even if, like with Stephen King, most of them will have to be rewritten.

[Shecky]

In the process of publishing my first book myself, I realized that with the 650,000 symbols (letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.) in addition to the thousands of literary elements (characters, settings, conflicts, arcs, plots, sub-plots, emotions, ...) that even if I got 99.9% of it all perfect, it would still leave about a thousand errors. And with each error comes the possibility of kicking a reader out of the story (there might also be some that luckily add charm, which one runs the risk of removing through the editing process). In addition to this, my brain is able to compensate for errors far too easily, making it harder to see what problems exist in the book (which I hear is why even the best copy editors will probably only get about 80% of the grammar and spelling errors).

So I understand much better why even publishing companies with there teams of editors still leave a fair number of errors in books.

A few minor (and, really, not on topic, so apologies) points.

1) Grammar "errors." This is such a fuzzy, nebulous issue; "grammar" is not a monolithic, absolute, by-the-numbers thing. First, there's the fact that only the most academic register adheres with total fidelity to the "rules" (i.e., follows the top style guides with rigid insistence)—every other register is increasingly relaxed by comparison, following typical usage instead of external rules. Second, beyond that, any point of view that is not utterly detached from every character is at least somewhat flavored by the idiolect of one or more particular characters, so the grammar in the text necessarily becomes less "correct."

2) Non-grammatical issues. These are fuzzier and therefore less easy to pin down as errors except when blatant; even consistency, ostensibly the easiest issue to identify, does not necessarily apply if the narrator is even slightly unreliable (i.e., human and well portrayed as such). Furthermore, many "errors" of this sort are less mistakes than points of preference; for example, a choice to steer a plot in direction X, while not to the tastes of some readers, is not an error but, well, a choice.

2) "80%." Hmm. Now I'm wondering where that figure came from, because it certainly doesn't apply to every book I can recall reading; I'd estimate the typical percentage at mid to upper 90s. When it comes to the "particulate matter" level of editing (the simplest, least arguable questions such as spelling, much of the punctuation, syntax, etc.), any copyeditor who reached only a level of 80% accuracy would never work again, at least for that client. One of my fairly recent copyedits, for example, was observed by a thoughtful reviewer to have had, quote, "an error about every 100–150 pages," which comes to a foul-up every 25,000 to 40,000 words or so, an accuracy rate of at least 99.996%.

In short, if you're seeing inarguable mistakes (i.e., not questions of choice, appropriate register, etc.) much more often than that, someone really dropped the ball.

Sorry for the sidetrack; carry on.

[slrogers]

2) "80%." Hmm. Now I'm wondering where that figure came from, because it certainly doesn't apply to every book I can recall reading; I'd estimate the typical percentage at mid to upper 90s. When it comes to the "particulate matter" level of editing (the simplest, least arguable questions such as spelling, much of the punctuation, syntax, etc.), any copyeditor who reached only a level of 80% accuracy would never work again, at least for that client. One of my fairly recent copyedits, for example, was observed by a thoughtful reviewer to have had, quote, "an error about every 100–150 pages," which comes to a foul-up every 25,000 to 40,000 words or so, an accuracy rate of at least 99.996%.

In short, if you're seeing inarguable mistakes (i.e., not questions of choice, appropriate register, etc.) much more often than that, someone really dropped the ball.

The 80% doesn't (and like you said shouldn't) come from the final product, which is why most publishing houses have several editors and proofreaders (in addition to not accepting book that have a large number of mistakes in them). The 80% came from what I've read on several web pages on (or from) copy editors and perhaps comes from the 80/20 rule. You might see it reflected in several self-published books, (even those that have gone through an editing process) because of lack of budget and because the author can too easily miss mistakes by over familiarity of the material (not seeing the mistakes because they know what should be there).

And while some "mistakes" may be more fuzzy, each one still has the potential to kick a reader out of your story and the more there are the worse it gets. The phenomenal authors are able to make their story more seamless to more people. (While the average "successful" author might only be able to find a couple of thousand people, and the average writer trying to get published has a much harder time.)

I paint a bleak picture on this because I think I'm starting to understand why writing is so tough and why so few  really do well, and even fewer knock it out of the park.

[Shecky]

Ah, I see what you meant: 80% pre-editing.

As for the potential to "kick a reader out of your story," it's very often a question of targeted audience. One man's meat is another man's poison; what will cause Reader A to pause, blink and wonder will give Reader B no pause whatsoever. "Seamless" is, most of the time, purely an issue of which preferences the author and editor wish to attract.

[slrogers]

Ah, I see what you meant: 80% pre-editing.

As for the potential to "kick a reader out of your story," it's very often a question of targeted audience. One man's meat is another man's poison; what will cause Reader A to pause, blink and wonder will give Reader B no pause whatsoever. "Seamless" is, most of the time, purely an issue of which preferences the author and editor wish to attract.

No, I meant that roughly 80% of the errors will get caught with each round of editing. http://www.copyediting.com/error-rates-editing suggests that it's more like 80-95%.

I don't know if I'd trust an editor or proofreader that said that they could get all of them. But it sounds like with Publishing houses, the content editor will try and catch as many of these (typos, spelling, grammar) as they can as well as story-line problems that they think you might have. Then, after fixing those, a copy editor will try and catch as many hard errors (names mismatches, inconstancies, and typos, spelling, grammar, ...) as they can. Then after all of those rounds of editing, the proofreaders will try and check for typos, spelling, etc as well as any formatting problems. So after the whole process, you should have less than 0.05% of 0.05% of 0.05% = 0.0001% of the hard errors. But that's in addition to all of the editing they would like you to do in advance, which all totaled should hopefully get you to less than 0.00001% (which if my calculations are correct would be about 1 or 2 per book).  Thus for anyone hoping to have professional quality, it could be rather expensive ($4,000 to more than $25,000 depending on the editors that you use). If you are banking on the book making $100,000 or more than you have no problems. If your just hoping that it might make $3,000 than your in a different ball park.

And no doubt "seamless" differs from reader to reader but some books (like Harry Potter) get closer than other books which might have the same target audience. And no doubt there are other important elements of "style" such as creativity and the like that add into the mix that help the reader overlook whatever "problems" they might have with the story.

Unfortunately it feels like "eliminating errors" tends to kill "creative" thinking, but so much of both are needed to make it the best possible book for the reader.

[Shecky]

Most publishing-house developmental/content/story/etc. editors don't mess with particulate-level correction, sticking instead primarily with story-level issues; typically, the only people dealing with those are the copyeditor and then the proofreader. They're very much after the fact of the truly creative phase of the book; while the author tends to have the final say-so on whether to accept or stet the edits made by the copyeditor and proofreader (and thereby sometimes adjust or reconfirm the artistic angle), the creative aspect is largely finished well before that point. That being said, I can tell you that a copyeditor who misses 1 of 5 errors simply won't have work for long; 80% is rotten for a professional copyeditor. 95% is better, but in my experience, there's a rough average of one-ish straight-up error (i.e., not a question of style or preference but of actual mistake) per page, be it a typo, omitted/doubled word, that kind of thing); let's call it one in every two hundred words. Picking an arbitrary average of 100k words per novel (which feels about right across the eighty I've done in the past year and a half), that comes to about 500 pure errors per novel. Catch 95% of those and you still leave 25 errors in the novel...and that rate gets seen by everyone, as even the least error-sensitive reader eventually notices at that rate of a clear mistake roughly every sixteen pages. No, 95% is still too much...hence the proofreader as a belt-and-suspenders step. And even with the proofer, some errors will inevitably slip through, but by that point, they're infrequent enough to bother none but the most quiveringly indignant, eager-to-take offense reader.

Anyway, splitting the editing between developmental and copy, then finishing up with a proofread, is a good process, one that lets the big-picture story items be hashed out in their own time, making sure those are done and set before that final superficial polish is done. But yeah, you're absolutely right that assembling a full editorial team can be pricey as hell (although my mind boggles at the figure of $25,000 you mentioned for editing; are you sure that doesn't include cover artist, internal artist, typesetter [or whatever the digital equivalent is now] and publicist, among others?). I'm not cheap—the cats have to eat, after all—and I can see $4000 easily spent on quality editorial work. That's one of the strongest arguments out there for going the traditional-publishing route instead of self-publishing: you're putting the financial burden for that upfront work on a much larger institution that can afford to shell it out (although even that isn't a given in terms of top quality, but YMMV).

Anyway, as I said, I know this is only peripheral to your original post; sorry for derailing. Just thought I'd clear up a touch about the one aspect I truly know intimately. Hope it helps.

[slrogers]

Most publishing-house developmental/content/story/etc. editors don't mess with particulate-level correction, sticking instead primarily with story-level issues; typically, the only people dealing with those are the copyeditor and then the proofreader. They're very much after the fact of the truly creative phase of the book; while the author tends to have the final say-so on whether to accept or stet the edits made by the copyeditor and proofreader (and thereby sometimes adjust or reconfirm the artistic angle), the creative aspect is largely finished well before that point. That being said, I can tell you that a copyeditor who misses 1 of 5 errors simply won't have work for long; 80% is rotten for a professional copyeditor. 95% is better, but in my experience, there's a rough average of one-ish straight-up error (i.e., not a question of style or preference but of actual mistake) per page, be it a typo, omitted/doubled word, that kind of thing); let's call it one in every two hundred words. Picking an arbitrary average of 100k words per novel (which feels about right across the eighty I've done in the past year and a half), that comes to about 500 pure errors per novel. Catch 95% of those and you still leave 25 errors in the novel...and that rate gets seen by everyone, as even the least error-sensitive reader eventually notices at that rate of a clear mistake roughly every sixteen pages. No, 95% is still too much...hence the proofreader as a belt-and-suspenders step. And even with the proofer, some errors will inevitably slip through, but by that point, they're infrequent enough to bother none but the most quiveringly indignant, eager-to-take offense reader.

Anyway, splitting the editing between developmental and copy, then finishing up with a proofread, is a good process, one that lets the big-picture story items be hashed out in their own time, making sure those are done and set before that final superficial polish is done. But yeah, you're absolutely right that assembling a full editorial team can be pricey as hell (although my mind boggles at the figure of $25,000 you mentioned for editing; are you sure that doesn't include cover artist, internal artist, typesetter [or whatever the digital equivalent is now] and publicist, among others?). I'm not cheap—the cats have to eat, after all—and I can see $4000 easily spent on quality editorial work. That's one of the strongest arguments out there for going the traditional-publishing route instead of self-publishing: you're putting the financial burden for that upfront work on a much larger institution that can afford to shell it out (although even that isn't a given in terms of top quality, but YMMV).

Anyway, as I said, I know this is only peripheral to your original post; sorry for derailing. Just thought I'd clear up a touch about the one aspect I truly know intimately. Hope it helps.

I think the >$25,000 might be for all editing combined or it might just be for the developmental editing (once I see a price tag that big I stop looking, knowing that it's way out of my price range) but on http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/the-real-costs-of-self-publishing-book/ it looks like "high end" of just the developmental editing is around that. It looks like (from that web page) for just the copy-editing ranges from about $0.012 to about $0.10 per word. (so $4,000 sounds like a fair price especially for someone who won't leave more than 5 errors for 500 that are fixed. -- I'm hoping that for my next book I can budget at least that much in.  I'm also hoping that by then I'm get to be good enough that you'd catch less than 500 out of a 100,000 word book  -- on this last one it was embarrassingly orders of magnitude bigger, I think 4x or more.)

But that being said I think I found my inspiration to do better at both the details and the over-arching creative landscape. In compare writing to art work I found that the writings of Vincent van Gogh to his brother, while he was struggling to make a living at painting are helpful, "As soon as I have more power over my brush, ... it will not be long before you need not send me money any more."   --- I just have to learn better how to hold my brush. Hopefully it will not be long before each reader will see in every detail of my works, the strength of my passion and be enthralled with the story. I love too much the dream to let the minor set backs of not being good enough hold me back. One of these days I'll not just be "good enough" but set new standards for "as good as it gets." I love dreaming far bigger than I am and stretching to see just how far I can reach (it's just slightly unfortunate that I have to stretch a little more than most of you).

[Shecky]

I think the >$25,000 might be for all editing combined or it might just be for the developmental editing (once I see a price tag that big I stop looking, knowing that it's way out of my price range) but on http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/the-real-costs-of-self-publishing-book/ it looks like "high end" of just the developmental editing is around that. It looks like (from that web page) for just the copy-editing ranges from about $0.012 to about $0.10 per word. (so $4,000 sounds like a fair price especially for someone who won't leave more than 5 errors for 500 that are fixed. -- I'm hoping that for my next book I can budget at least that much in.  I'm also hoping that by then I'm get to be good enough that you'd catch less than 500 out of a 100,000 word book  -- on this last one it was embarrassingly orders of magnitude bigger, I think 4x or more.)

Yikes, no. $25k for a dev edit is insane. $4000 is more like the high end on dev edits for a novel. As for copyedits, my rates work out (I go hourly, but it comes out in this range) to roughly a penny a word, and I'm in the middle of what most copyeditors charge. No copyeditor would charge (or, to be clear, be worth) ten cents a word. Holy cow, no. The EFA massively inflated their rates on both dev and copyediting simply as a bargaining tool; what they're claiming to be the "low end" is really the middle of the road, with the upper end being a hilariously wrong thing. I mean, seriously, $7000 for a book? I've worked with some authors who were pretty various with their grammar, spelling, punctuation and the like, and I've never had a single book that would require even half that much copyediting (and that's including the couple of 900-pagers I have under my belt).

In short, no, I'm still going to confirm that $25k in no way represents only the dev/copyedits, that it must be the entire cost for a spare-no-expenses self-pubbed book. Publicity, physical-book printing & distribution, negotiation for big-box-store shelf space, the whole shebang...and even then, it's a shocking figure. If a prospective self-pubber is at all diligent with research, he or she could easily come away with maybe $5000 in expenses and get one heck of a pro-level product.

[slrogers]

Yikes, no. $25k for a dev edit is insane. $4000 is more like the high end on dev edits for a novel. As for copyedits, my rates work out (I go hourly, but it comes out in this range) to roughly a penny a word, and I'm in the middle of what most copyeditors charge. No copyeditor would charge (or, to be clear, be worth) ten cents a word. Holy cow, no. The EFA massively inflated their rates on both dev and copyediting simply as a bargaining tool; what they're claiming to be the "low end" is really the middle of the road, with the upper end being a hilariously wrong thing. I mean, seriously, $7000 for a book? I've worked with some authors who were pretty various with their grammar, spelling, punctuation and the like, and I've never had a single book that would require even half that much copyediting (and that's including the couple of 900-pagers I have under my belt).

In short, no, I'm still going to confirm that $25k in no way represents only the dev/copyedits, that it must be the entire cost for a spare-no-expenses self-pubbed book. Publicity, physical-book printing & distribution, negotiation for big-box-store shelf space, the whole shebang...and even then, it's a shocking figure. If a prospective self-pubber is at all diligent with research, he or she could easily come away with maybe $5000 in expenses and get one heck of a pro-level product.

That's good news. Though it still makes a strong case for trying to find a publisher instead of doing it all ones self. At least that way you have someone up front tell you that your writing is worth at least that much and that they're willing to put up the money for it. But then again, college level classes might cost about that as well, and you could chalk up any money lost in the endeavor as the cost of learning. Or one could use the blunt force bootstrap method of spending as little as possible and just make the corrections as quickly as readers identify them (unfortunately, that seems to annoy readers).

[Shecky]

That's good news. Though it still makes a strong case for trying to find a publisher instead of doing it all ones self. At least that way you have someone up front tell you that your writing is worth at least that much and that they're willing to put up the money for it. But then again, college level classes might cost about that as well, and you could chalk up any money lost in the endeavor as the cost of learning. Or one could use the blunt force bootstrap method of spending as little as possible and just make the corrections as quickly as readers identify them (unfortunately, that seems to annoy readers).

It's a tough choice either way. I have nothing but sympathy for people trying to break into the field.

[Farmerbob1]

That's good news. Though it still makes a strong case for trying to find a publisher instead of doing it all ones self. At least that way you have someone up front tell you that your writing is worth at least that much and that they're willing to put up the money for it. But then again, college level classes might cost about that as well, and you could chalk up any money lost in the endeavor as the cost of learning. Or one could use the blunt force bootstrap method of spending as little as possible and just make the corrections as quickly as readers identify them (unfortunately, that seems to annoy readers).

Concerns about editorial quality is one of the two biggest reasons why I decided to do blog fiction before trying to publish anything.

The biggest reason was simply that I couldn't just sit down and write a whole book without feedback from anyone.  Just the idea of writing a whole book without outside input was painful.

The second reason was that I hadn't taken an English class in twenty-five years.  I knew I was rusty.  I was practically buried in rust.  I needed people to help me spot my mistakes.

The third reason was that I wanted to be sure that I was good enough at telling a story to get readership.  If I couldn't manage to get a following after a month or so writing, then I was doing something wrong.

I started out with a little fanfiction, and got a lot of kind responses, which encouraged me.  Then I started original fiction, and got a lot more responses.  Now, across my three original fictions, I see anywhere between 500 and 1000 or so hits in a day, sometimes substantially more if a new forum community discovers my work, and their members like it.

I'd like to make certain that anyone who reads this realizes that one of the less-well-known things that exists in the serial webfiction reader community are the corrective readers.  They aren't doing editing-level work, but some of them will point out several things in every chapter they read, if they spot them.  Corrective readers helped me so much, especially in the early writing!  Correcting what they find is not always required.  Sometimes they aren't right, or the mistakes they find are intentional because of who is speaking.  However, I always thank them even if I don't agree with them, because people who both read and spot mistakes in my chapters are awesome.

I do not have a full-on editor mode.  When I post a chapter, it has normally been read over and poked at a time or two to make it a first-draft quality chapter.  After my readership has poked at it a few times, and I've read through it and modified around clumsy bits, it's then a second draft quality.  Second draft quality work seems to be about the normal for self-published fiction, from what I've seen, so little editing will be required at least for the first few books, I think.

If I hadn't gotten such a good reception from readers, then I probably wouldn't be where I am today, preparing to publish the book I'm currently writing.  Eventually, if I ever get an editor interested in my work (which I haven't even bothered trying yet) I might be able to write entire books without input from others, and then let an editor process it, but right now, that prospect scares me.

Since you have already published one book, It seems as if you might be past the point where confidence and editorial competence is an issue.  If not, and if you are the sort of person who can share their unfinished writing with others, then serial blog fiction might be a good tool for practice and confidence building.

[slrogers]

Concerns about editorial quality is one of the two biggest reasons why I decided to do blog fiction before trying to publish anything.

The biggest reason was simply that I couldn't just sit down and write a whole book without feedback from anyone.  Just the idea of writing a whole book without outside input was painful.

The second reason was that I hadn't taken an English class in twenty-five years.  I knew I was rusty.  I was practically buried in rust.  I needed people to help me spot my mistakes.

The third reason was that I wanted to be sure that I was good enough at telling a story to get readership.  If I couldn't manage to get a following after a month or so writing, then I was doing something wrong.

I started out with a little fanfiction, and got a lot of kind responses, which encouraged me.  Then I started original fiction, and got a lot more responses.  Now, across my three original fictions, I see anywhere between 500 and 1000 or so hits in a day, sometimes substantially more if a new forum community discovers my work, and their members like it.

I'd like to make certain that anyone who reads this realizes that one of the less-well-known things that exists in the serial webfiction reader community are the corrective readers.  They aren't doing editing-level work, but some of them will point out several things in every chapter they read, if they spot them.  Corrective readers helped me so much, especially in the early writing!  Correcting what they find is not always required.  Sometimes they aren't right, or the mistakes they find are intentional because of who is speaking.  However, I always thank them even if I don't agree with them, because people who both read and spot mistakes in my chapters are awesome.

I do not have a full-on editor mode.  When I post a chapter, it has normally been read over and poked at a time or two to make it a first-draft quality chapter.  After my readership has poked at it a few times, and I've read through it and modified around clumsy bits, it's then a second draft quality.  Second draft quality work seems to be about the normal for self-published fiction, from what I've seen, so little editing will be required at least for the first few books, I think.

If I hadn't gotten such a good reception from readers, then I probably wouldn't be where I am today, preparing to publish the book I'm currently writing.  Eventually, if I ever get an editor interested in my work (which I haven't even bothered trying yet) I might be able to write entire books without input from others, and then let an editor process it, but right now, that prospect scares me.

Since you have already published one book, It seems as if you might be past the point where confidence and editorial competence is an issue.  If not, and if you are the sort of person who can share their unfinished writing with others, then serial blog fiction might be a good tool for practice and confidence building.

Where is your blog at again? I want to see more of how you approach this.
Thanks.

[Farmerbob1]

Where is your blog at again? I want to see more of how you approach this.
Thanks.

https://setinstonestory.wordpress.com/author-info/

That link will put you in my updated personal 'about the author' page of my current story, and provides links to my older projects.  Symbiote is around 500k words, Reject Hero around 200k words, and Set In Stone is now at about 50k words.  You can see how the readers and I interacted.  The interaction was (cumulatively) fantastically helpful to me, despite the fact that I did not always agree with the comments.

[slrogers]

https://setinstonestory.wordpress.com/author-info/

That link will put you in my updated personal 'about the author' page of my current story, and provides links to my older projects.  Symbiote is around 500k words, Reject Hero around 200k words, and Set In Stone is now at about 50k words.  You can see how the readers and I interacted.  The interaction was (cumulatively) fantastically helpful to me, despite the fact that I did not always agree with the comments.

Thanks, It's interesting to see how this works. There seems to be so much available on the web that it can be overwhelming at times. And with so many people doing so many different things, it's got to be tough carving out a part and getting a lot of attention. I'll have to figure out how to work something like this for me (so many ideas for books, so little time), I just have to figure out how to use the limited time I have for the biggest impact.
 
Thanks.

[Farmerbob1]

Thanks, It's interesting to see how this works. There seems to be so much available on the web that it can be overwhelming at times. And with so many people doing so many different things, it's got to be tough carving out a part and getting a lot of attention. I'll have to figure out how to work something like this for me (so many ideas for books, so little time), I just have to figure out how to use the limited time I have for the biggest impact.
 
Thanks.

It definitely won't work for everyone.  I happen to have extremely thick skin, but I'm also able to be constructive with criticism that is provided to me.  At the same time, I'm willing to say 'no' and not change something if I disagree with a comment.  It's a balancing act at times.