Kelly Abell Books

In thinking about this tip I wanted to share with you some of my own recent experience.  I am an Editor In Chief for Solstice Publishing so I have experience with editing manuscripts.  Does that mean I don't make mistakes in my own work?  Absolutely not.  I am currently working on the second book in the In Lies series, Captured In Lies, and I just finished the first round of edits with my editor.  I would like to share a few brief thoughts from that experience with you.

First, you are too close to your own work to edit it.  As you write your brain fills in all the blanks and you find that words you think are there are missing.  You also get way too close to the dialogue of your characters and because you know them very well you make some assumptions that your reader won't recognize.  A good professional editor will spot these errors and be able to point them out to you.

Second, everyone forgets the rules of grammar.  No matter how experienced you are when you read your own work you view it through different eyes.  You are not as objective and you miss those habits that you develop over the years.  One of my weaknesses is using weak verbs.  My editor's recommendation to me was go back to what they taught you in high school.  Diagram that sentence and see if you have the subject and verb in agreement first of all, and then decide if you are using the proper verb that gives your passage the most active voice.  Ugh!  But he was right. 

So the moral to this story?  Find yourself a professional editor or a good critique group that has professional editors as members.  Before you present that manuscript you've so lovingly slaved over to a publisher make sure it is the best it can be to a cold set of eyes,  because those eyes belong to a submissions editor.  The idea is to reduce the number of rejection letters you receive, not increase them. 

Join me over the next few weeks as I share more of those tips I've recieved over the years and watch for Captured In Lies to come out in June.