I’m Editing

I’ve gotten Van Dyne’s Zuvembies back from the beta readers, and made corrections based on their suggestions. Now I am beginning the final editing process.

Rather than pay $450 or more for a professional (whatever that means) editor, I bought ProWritingAid for a lifetime fee of $300. I made the purchase to up my game, so to speak.

We writers fall into habits. And those habits are what often result in sloppy writing.

Using the best editing software I can buy, I get all of the services a professional editor can provide at a tiny fraction of the cost. Technology is a sound business investment, because any businessman will tell you that the single most expensive part of doing business is personnel.

That is why people are constantly being replaced by technology. That is why raising the minimum wage is a fallacy: those workers, who would benefit, will be replaced by machines — because in the long run machines are cheaper.

Today, even though I buy a First Class airline ticket, I no longer get First Class service and have to check-in my own luggage. Why? It’s because the airline can then employ less personnel.

So, rather than pay a human editor to edit each book I write, I paid a one time fee — and I get all the same advice and recommendations. And probably more, because the human eye is fallible. The machine is not.

I have a list of editors that I will never use because the books they supposedly edited are rife with errors. Humans are fallible.

I can read a text three or four times. Yet when I have the computer read it to me, I still find errors. The human brain will try to make sense of the sentence, and so I read things that aren’t there. On the other hand, the computer reads exactly what’s there. It misses nothing.

ProWritingAid is a very useful tool. Is it the best? I don’t know. Several authors I know like it and recommended it. I tried the software, saw the potential to improve my books, and bought it. And that’s a simple unsolicited observation.

Because May was a personally tumultuous month, I’m behind on my publishing schedule. But I’m catching up. Van Dyne’s Zuvembies will come out next month and after that I have a Justinia Wright novel and novelette to follow.

Now it is back to editing for me.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy editing!