Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Red Pen Reader

I used to be a red pen reader. You know? One of those readers who fancies herself a grammar Nazi who could be a hotshot editor if she really wanted to be? 
And then I wrote my first novel. And tried to edit my first novel which was 90k words long. I even had several highly respected, extremely intelligent friends help me edit my novel. That was three years and five dozen edits ago. And you know what? There are probably still mistakes in Filter. 
There's a big difference between reading a novel with fresh eyes, just picking it up off the shelf and scanning it....and struggling through writing it for six months and then trying to convince yourself to read what has become the bane of your existence. My novels and I fight like siblings. It's awful. 
I liken editing my novels to trying to get stones out of the garden. No matter how many times you plow or turn the soil over, there's always another stone lurking somewhere in the dirt. 
That's all very understandable. 
But sometimes, sometimes, I do something very stupid. Sometimes my brain glazes over certain points because it figures that those points must be right because who would get THAT wrong because it's not complicated to get it right. 
What I'm trying to say is that I made a big boo-boo in the first edition of Lipstick & Bolsheviks. It is proof that even I get confused by this massive, tangled family tree. 
I suppose now is a good time to 'fess up. 
I'm just glad my BFF caught it before it went into print! I was just about to click on APPROVE FILES! Ack!

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