I’ve been working on things that take concentration and time—lots of uninterrupted time. And I’ve given up a few things in the processes. One is my daily walk (I’m definitely walking this morning before the heat sets in) and another is my daily blog. I’ve missed a few lately—breaking my “daily” record.
What am I doing? This weekend, I’ve been writing the index for my upcoming book for Allworth Press, Talk Up Your Book. And for the last few weeks and now sporadically when I absolutely must have a break from the tedium, I work on my novel. (Working title, The Klepto Cat Mystery.)
I thought I did the final proof for the nonfiction book a month or so ago and actually started working on the index then. One of the experts who received a galley in order to write a testimonial, however, suggested a format change that the publishers’ editors accepted. Without consulting me, they made major formatting changes which increased the book by around 30 pages. Now all of my preliminary index entries are off from about page 40 to page 300. Not only that, the spacing is off in many areas because they didn’t do a thorough job in making these changes. In what should have been a clean proof this time (the 3rd pass), I have located approximately 40 problems—all resulting from their attempt to make a major change midstream. And one that was not necessary, in my opinion. It would have been fine the way it was. It was one of those close calls—an either/or situation. It was right either way. And I would have suggested they leave it the way it was. If it ain’t broke…you know…
When my mind isn’t so cluttered with the proofing and the index, which I’m eager to get out the door to make room for an incoming editing job, I want to discuss how to handle authors of poorly written published books. I have two authors in mind at the moment whose novels I have tried to read, but couldn’t because there were so many problems. One of them even had some decent reviews.
I guess I read books partially from an editor’s point of view. If it is full of clichés and mistakes and doesn’t ring true, I am not interested in reading it. If it is sappy, predictable, trite and written as if by a third-grader or for a third-grade mentality, I am totally turned off by it. Last night, I started reading a light mystery novel and I kept laughing out loud. My partner, Dennis, said, “Funny story, huh?”
I said, “No, I’m just blown away by the triteness of this writing.” It was unbelievably dull and uninspired. Last year, I bought a book by someone I’ve known professionally for a while. I thought I’d read it while traveling. I ended up leaving it on the plane on the first leg of my trip because I couldn’t read comfortably past the errors. The writing was decent, but OMG, the grammatical mistakes were so distracting, I couldn’t read the thing.
Now, what I want to talk to you about is this—do I contact these authors and gently suggest that they bring their next manuscript to me (or another qualified BOOK editor) before publishing it or do I just stay out of it?