Kenshin Himura (How I feel)
The universe hates me today. Truly, it does. For some reason, I suddenly can’t post, like, or do anything on Facebook. So there goes that part of my morning promotional work. At least Twitter was working. Still, I’m seeing all my friends posting up a storm on there and I have no idea what happened to me. I don’t appear to be blocked since I assume I’d be notified about that.
Add into this that I’m going to clean up Beginning of a Hero. Sound strange, but I’ve learned a lot more about editing (mostly from Ionia . . . 90%) and it probably needs a facelift. I feel sorry for the book because it took one of the most abusive paths I could imagine for a manuscript.
I may have mentioned a few times that an author should NOT take every piece of editorial advice they get. This is mostly about suggestions of style or the use of the rarely explained ‘show, don’t tell’. Seriously, don’t bother taking that phrase to heart if the person can’t explain what they mean. Anyway, I added in every piece of advice I was given over the years I worked on Beginning of a Hero. This included suggestions ranging from changing the tense to past tense to using short sentences to removing 75% of the commas. Around 2007, I saw how much of a mess this path made. It spent a long time trying to bring Beginning of a Hero back to what I wanted and the story/characters got there. One thing that didn’t help is that many people that beta read for me only looked for spelling errors, so I was in the dark about some of this until recently.
The book is still a good read, but the edges haven’t been polished. I can hear one or two people preparing to ask ‘why didn’t you hire a professional editor?’ For this, I say:
Clipart from Yahoo Image Search
One of the big reasons I took the self-publishing plunge was that I couldn’t find a job that didn’t suck my soul away. Office work was causing me to have suicidal thoughts and the pay I was earning barely covered bills. I was miserable and the idea of having to save up a couple thousand bucks before I tried self-publishing wasn’t appealing. I took the risk and I think it paid off. Now, I need to do another edit to polish what is already considered a fun story. It’s really just word repetition and awkward sentences, which is something I began cleaning up in books 3 and 4. So, Prodigy of Rainbow Tower might get a tune up at some point. It shouldn’t be as bad because it never had a Frankenstein’s Monster period like Beginning of a Hero.
Mostly this is rough work and will take a few days of hunting down the over-used words. I deeply regret the times I believed everyone knew more about how to write my book than I did.
(I can’t even report the problem to Facebook. Damn it!)
Legends of Windemere 
Sorry about your Facebook problems – I haven’t noticed anything today so it isn’t widespread. Hope it is just a glitch that gets fixed for you soon. I assume you have logged out and back in. Have you tried a different facebook account? Like maybe your wife’s account to see if it is your computer or just your account. Just some thoughts.
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I don’t know how to get into her account and I just tried on my phone. It failed. So, it’s definitely just me. Logged out and back in too. Nothing works, so it’s something on their end. Hopefully it’s fixed by noon because I really don’t like having a day where I can’t do all my promo work.
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So… does everyone who bought “Beginning of a Hero” get a free updated version?
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I’m not sure how it works exactly. I upload the new version and it should be a free upgrade from your Kindle account. If you already bought the book then you can’t buy it again or be charged.
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Okay, I see how it works. Since you sent it to me as an attachment on one of your freebie days, (because I couldn’t figure out at the time how to get it on the Canadian site) I don’t have it on Kindle. I may just have to buy it after all 🙂
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It’s staying at 99 cents. Though, I’m not sure what the Canada price is. Has to be the equivalent though.
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I think it’s about $1.03 or something. We’ve been pretty close to par for a while now.
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One of these days I need to find out how to receive my foreign royalties. UK has to be at a level where I should have gotten a check.
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Don’t you have to apply for a tax exemption or something? I know I would if I was to try to sell in the U.S.
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I don’t know. I’m unsure how it works and I’ve been too busy to bother.
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You definitely can’t take every suggestion to heart. For one thing, it would lead to many paradoxes. 🙂 Your storyline and characters are incredible; certainly, that’s the most important part. Hopefully, FB will wake up soon.
It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? Most of the time when you see the “show, don’t tell” remark, the person is telling you to show instead of tell, instead of showing you how to show instead of tell. They often don’t even take their own advice. 🙂
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I was lucky enough to ignore the suggestions about most characters and the story elements. It was the style that caused the issues. Looking back, it might have been people offering their personal preferences to me and I never realized it. Instead of helping me become the writer I could be, they were moving we toward being the type of writer they wanted. If that makes any sense.
That is definitely a point of irony. It’s why I stop listening when someone uses the phrase. Caused me nothing, but trouble.
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I think that’s it. People know what they are used to seeing, and people know the general rules that others have shared with them, and so much of the advice is geared toward this. The challenge is to develop your own unique style while also writing in a way that appeals to a significant audience.
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I’m getting better at that and improving with every book. The first one is the problem right now. I’m leery about printing it out and reading through it all over again though. A lot of paper needed for that and it’s easier to do a word search and scroll through. Such a pain.
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Actually i’m having the same problems with Facebook, I have no idea why but it’ll take time I guess to be resolved and that’s not good news, really sorry. Anyway, have a good Monday even though things seem not to be working good. 🙂 Best wishes.
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Good to hear I’m not alone. The irritating thing is that I commented on a friend’s status and FB crashed within 5 minutes later. If I had only done my promo work before that, I might have been safe.
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I had some similar types of issues with RC&R. We southerners tend to have run on sentences and use “and” a lot and use people’s names a lot when talking (It is respectful). I have cleaned it up some, but don’t want to lose the style of southern writing. Scrivener actually has a feature that will show you word usage so you can avoid over usage easily. I am hoping that will help me in the future.
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I’m a lot better when I do edits now. It’s just the first book that’s going to be the real pain in the ass. I think every author has a ‘go to’ list of words that they don’t even realize.
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Facebook is down world wide according to Google. They are working on the issue.
As for editing Book 1 again, is it a necessity? Or something that could wait a bit while you continue publishing work to sell?
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It is a necessity if I want to boost up to the next level. These are problems found in the third book too, but not as bad. So, it will cause some delays unless I go for publishing now and posting a new version later. That’s a little underhanded though.
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Hmm. Is it wrong that I didn’t see any of these issues while I was reading it? I would make a terrible editor. 😉
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That’s the thing. Casual reading wouldn’t bring a lot of these up. Editing and nitpicking would snag it, so I need to fix it if I want to ever get into the big leagues.
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Ah, the expected move from AAA to the show, huh? I suppose, a tweak here and there wouldn’t hurt then.
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It might look worse than it is though. Some of the words are in dialogue and they’re ones that have multiple means. Big difference between ‘about to’ in action and ‘about’ when talking.
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I’m totally with you on going back and revising published books. Although I’m pretty happy with my own book, I decided to re-read it a few weeks ago to prepare for working on the sequel, and there’s definitely stuff I want to change. Like you said, wording, removing/adding commas, etc. I might even work in a little more description, here and there. Best of luck with the editing!!!
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Thanks. It’s really a handful of words that I need to switch up. I can see an amazing change in style between the first and third book. Even the first and second are amazingly different.
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Evolution, my dear Yallowitz.
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Just wish the old stuff could fix itself.
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Literary sentience, my dear Yallowitz.
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Is your book available as an E-Book yet Michelle? I seriously cannot stuff another paper book into my house. The Hoarders people are already snooping around… 😀
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Indeed it is 🙂 Hope over to my website: http://michelleproulx.com/my-works.html — I have links to a bunch of ebook retailers, so you can take your pick!
And I hear you on the paperback explosion. My bookshelves are starting to sag from the weight, and they’re only flimsy Ikea shelves so they won’t last long. If you hear about an apartment building collapsing in southern Ontario, you’ll know the cause 😀
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I’ll check it out! I’ll email you when I have finished reading it and we can do an interview on the Syndicate too. Sound good?
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Getting this message in my email without knowing the previous comment was really confusing.
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he he he Sorry Charles!
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Sounds great! 🙂
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Your path to publication sounds so much like mine! I’ve let too many people tell me what to do with MY work.
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And very few of them were novelists or even writers. I should have been more careful.
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Yeah, me too. Live and learn, I guess.
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I feel your pain– I’ve been having network issues all morning and it’s making me crazy. I had to actually step back and take a photo of my desktop computer, laptop, and ipad all sitting there and spinning like the eyes of that dude in the photo. The. Worst.
The Facebook will still be waiting for you when you get back though 🙂
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Thankfully, it started working again by late morning. It’s frustrating because I commented on a friend’s status then FB went down 5 minutes later. If I had done the promo stuff first, I would have been fine.
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First of all, when they update a kindle book, all users who have downloaded for free and or purchased that book will get a message saying there is a new version available,.There is no charge to the customer. Secondly, i would simply like to say that there is no shame in doing another edit. There have been so many authors who said “it is good enough.” I shudder. When they say this, it is basically saying that they don’t care enough about their audience to put out the best book they can for the enjoyment of their readers. It is taking the high road to polish a manuscript until it shines, even when the edits come late.
Finally, I would like to also say that this is a wonderful book. Most of the issues have been cosmetic and aesthetic and nothing to do with the actual plot itself. You are a writer, other jobs never work out for you because they are not what you are meant to be doing. I believe in you and a lot of other people do as well. Windemere does too. Especially Fizzle. Especially when you have apples.
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Thank you. That means a lot coming from you and I’m going to do my best to polish this book. I threw out the search for repeated words idea and I’m going line by line. Fingers crossed that it looks better by the time I’m done. I will admit that I’m sick of Hamilton Military Academy. I think I owe Selenia tuition with the amount of times I’ve gone back there.
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Lol she calls to you
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If I ever go through a year where I don’t have to edit Beginning of a Hero, I’ll be very confused and lost.
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You owe it to yourself and your work to make your book the’cleanest’ it can possibly be…I’m on that same path now…cheers!
Ellespeth
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Thanks. I’m hoping it doesn’t take longer than 2 weeks, but who knows.
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