27 September
Guest post - Louise Harnby
As I noted further down the page, Louise Harnby runs a very successful website dealing with all things proofreadery, and she has kindly written a post for my blog. Here it is.
Misfiring and Mis-hiring - Getting the Right Help
More and more of us are choosing the self-publishing route to bring our stories and advice to a broader audience. Deciding on the most suitable level of editorial intervention can be tricky for the first-timer. Inexperienced writers, even those who believe their language skills are top-notch, can fall victim to the misfire or the mis-hire. The misfire occurs when a writer assumes they don’t need a fresh set of eyes to assess their work professionally. I’m an experienced proofreader and yet when I published my own editorial freelancing guide I hired a colleague to work on my book. It’s not that I don’t have confidence in my ability to pick up mistakes in the written word; it’s that I don’t have confidence in my ability to pick up mistakes in MY written words. When the writing’s your own you see the ideas in your head rather than the text on the page. The nub of it is that poor spelling, grammar and punctuation can irritate readers; poor structure can confuse them. Successful self-publishing requires that both problems have been attended to. The mis-hire occurs when the writer picks the wrong person for the job. For example, they commission a proofreader when they need a copy editor; or they hire a copy editor when they need a substantive editor. Commissioning the wrong person for the job is time and money wasted - it’s as simple as that - and unless the writer has an unlimited supply of both, it makes sense to make sure the person hired is the best fit for the job. If, on the one hand, you’re thinking about whether you should bother hiring a professional to work with you on your written material, ask yourself the following questions: (a) Do you judge a writer negatively when you come across errors in their written work? (b) Have those mistakes affected the message being communicated in a way that either annoys or confuses you? If you answered ˜yes’ to the above, do you think you can risk a misfire of your own? If, on the other, you’re wondering what kind of professional you should be working with, take a look at these free Guidelines for new authors that I created with this issue in mind. They’re available either as a downloadable pdf or as an ebooklet. They’re designed to help you avoid the mis-hire. The ability to self-publish with such ease is possibly the single most democratizing event to have taken place within the publishing industry in the past decade. And with democracy comes choice - and lots of it. Choosing well is part of the secret to self-publishing success.
19 September
But it wasn’t me
A few months ago I spotted a big spelling error on the back of a fairly high profile Penguin novel (The Yard, by Alex Grecian). You can find all about it by scrolling back through these posts a page or so. No such error now, in the second of the series! Somebody must have spotted this and told Mr Penguin... but it wasn’t me!
13 September
Fame but no fortune
Louise Harnby, who has a very well-known website supporting her proofreading business, recently interviewed one of my clients, Terence Park. Terence came to me for help in copy-editing his sf novel Guide to First Contact. I thoroughly enjoyed both the job and the book, and Terence was kind enough to give me a fine testimonial which you can find in my Editorial pages. You can find Louise’s interview, which covers a whole range of writing and editing topics, here.
13 July
The Scottish guy won
Well done Andy Murray, although I wish I could have seen the match. Alas, I was on a train down to London and either the wi-fi wasn’t very good or my netbook isn’t, because it buffered for about five minutes for every ten seconds viewing. I was getting further and further behind. By the time the train reached Euston, I was watching the semi-finals. I was lucky to even know the result. I kept edging over to see what other people were doing with their various devices but none of them, it seemed, were tennis fans. One man was obviously doing something highly secret because he gave me a suspicious look and hugged his tablet to his chest. My wife doesn’t use her mobile phone so she didn’t tell me the result. My daughter, who would usually let me know what was happening, was at some arcane grad ball. In the end my friend from Malta texted me with "The Scottish guy won." I don’t mind betting I was the only one on the train who received the news via Malta! Note to self: don’t plan a train trip on Wimbledon Finals Day next year.
22 June
Alternative films
My other half, who hails from China, has come up with a few choice phrases in her time. Asking the butcher for a beefbugger was one, and wanting to give our son a Chinese name that meant "he who stands proudly in Europe" was another. Now she has turned her inscrutable attention to film titles. Forget those boring titles in my film review; how about The Life of Pee? Actually, I gather there are countries where ‘Pi’ is pronounced ‘Pee’, but I doubt the word carries quite the same connotations there. And just the other day, when she spotted a man in a magazine who bore an uncanny resemblance to a younger Sir Anthony Hopkins: The Sleepy Lambs. I believe there will be more to come. Now that I have been alerted, I shall be watching out for them.
10 May
Take the test
‘There’s a mistake on the back of this book,’ I told my three so-called clever older children the other day. They looked and looked, and argued about commas and ‘I would have written it differently’, but did they spot the error?
No, they didn’t.
I trust you have no such difficulty?
10 May
It must be a blokey thing
I was walking back from my SfEP meeting to my hotel... walking, in case you wondered, to save the Society a tube fare... when a black jaguar sports car, roof down in the sun, rumbling quietly from its four exhausts, eased past me and pulled up at some lights. I walked by, managing to restrain my drool to the pavement, and caught the eye of the young man who was driving it. I cocked a thumb. He reached over, opened the door, and said, "Where to, mate?" Well, it was only about a mile away and even in London traffic he got there in about 2.4 seconds, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself for that brief ride. And I’ve started saving up.
7 April
The New Proofreader
So, as reported elsewhere, Dylan has started reading the Beast Quest books. As far as I can tell, there are about thirty million books published in this series so the author, Adam Blade, must be a happy man. But he might do to find a better proofreader. Dylan - who is still only seven - found these mistakes without any help at all from me.
"Another herd of cattle stampeded in the night," he man said.
With a huge effort, Elenna threw Tom’s sword through through the air.
The water was a beautiful colour, but he knew it was a fatal.
Well done, Dylan! The future of proofreading is in safe hands. Incidentally, the great and good Harry Potter books are not immune to error. I’ve listed some mistakes in the Editorial section of this website, on the page called errata, They include (any genuine proofreaders look away now) miniscule. Oh dear, JKR!
7 April
Back from Malta
It was snowing when we left for Malta; not quite what I envisaged when we booked the flights, but I certainly felt smug as we jetted off to warmer climes. Lots of things happened. I went for a swim with my mobile in my pocket, thereby drowning it. As a result, not only did I not have any laptop connection, but nor did I have any connection via phone. I felt as if I’d regressed back to the 80s, and felt better for it. We went to see three films - the Croods, Jack the giant-slayer, and Les Miserables. They were all good in their different ways, and you can see my report in the Film Review section on this website. But most important of all was that Dylan started reading for enjoyment. Phew. It’s taken long enough, but during our week in Malta we couldn’t get his nose out of the Beast Quest books he was reading. And, Dylan being Dylan, he kept his eye open for mistakes in the text... but I’ll leave that for another post. When we got back it wasn’t snowing but we’ve been lighting the fire while everyone else is going around in shirtsleeves, so we don’t feel quite so smug. Roll on summer.
8 March
The Moon King
Congratulations to Neil Williamson of the Glasgow SF Writer’s Circle! He’s getting his first novel, The Moon King, published by Newcon Press: you can read all about it on his website. I for one will be getting a copy and attending the book launch. Nearer the publication date I shall be emailing a whole lot of people to persuade them to do the same. You have been warned.
8 March
Being connected
I went down to London a week or so ago for the council meeting of the SfEP, by train. I took a book to read but in the end I became more fascinated by my fellow-travellers. On the way to London, every person that I could see was plugged into something; mobile phone, ipad, netbook, or some other device that I don’t even know the name of. Almost all of them were wearing headphones. When I was in London I made a point of looking to see if this phenomenon carried over onto the local transport, including the Underground. It did. It seems that most of us can’t go anywhere nowadays without pressing buttons on a personal device and listening to something or other through personal headphones. On the way back up to Glasgow, a woman sat opposite me and took from her bag... a bunch of papers. A pen. Some sort of printed report. She started marking the papers and at last I could resist it no longer. I leaned forward and pointed out that she was the only person in the carriage (apart from me) who wasn’t connected to something. She smiled and nodded, and got back to her work. It occurred to me that the British have no real need for personal devices to prevent conversation and personal interaction, especially on a train. Our culture already does that for us.
3 February
And the winner is...
I don’t often cross-post between this blog and my professional website, but I really must protest. I have not long finished reading The Sword in the Stone to Dylan (splendid story, what)... and found so many errors in the typesetting that I was finding one or two almost every time I read out a chapter. My version of the book was printed in 1963; but surely they had proofreaders way back then? Check it out for yourself on my errata page in the Editorial section of this site. I expect there were some errors that I missed as I wasn’t really in proofreading mode. But even so, I can declare The Sword in the Stone a clear errata count winner. So far...
