Apologies for story.

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For those of you that have read my recent submission of a Bikini Beach story. I want to apologize for it. Not for the story itself, but for the grammatical errors that are littered throughout the story. To be honest the story wasn't ready for prime time.

Even though I had caught some items before and even 'revised' it. It still does not meet certain standards and I rushed it. And for that I'm sorry.

I don't plan on taking it down, but sometime later I 'do' plan on replacing it with, what I hope, is a better version. No I'm not trying to garner more views but to advise those that are interested in it, that at sometime, in the hopefully near future it may be worth relooking.

V/r

Ibi

Comments

One other Problem...

Thanks for the "heads up" and I look forward to re-reading it, but I did have one more problem...

You mention that it is connected to the story 'The Temptation of Anya' , and I haven't been able to find that one!

Can you give us a link?
Thanks a LOT!

Sapphire

No writer can honestly edit their own story

BarbieLee's picture

The mind is a funny mechanism. After an author writes a story, they try and edit it. It's a lost cause. The author's mind will correct all the mistakes in their mind without really seeing them on the paper or screen in front of their eyes. When the story is "fresh" in the mind it will have few mistakes if any. After the story has aged for a time (years usually) and the author reads it, all the mistakes will jump out as if they were reading some other author's story.

Editors know this. It is usually a lost cause to tell authors they can NOT proof their own works. It is why when editors write a story we usually hope to find an editor to proof our story before it hits the press. Because if we don't there are going to be grammatical errors and horror of horrors, possibly spelling mistakes.

It helps me to blame Murphy. You know, Murphy's Law, what can go wrong will go wrong.

Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl

I know Murphy.

I have lived with Murphy all my life. He is the shadow and my brother.

As for editing I have made the following for you.

It is why when writers write a story we usually hope to find an editor to proof our story before it hits the press. ;)

It ain't Murphy's Law that drives me nuts

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

It ain't Murphy's Law that drives me nuts, it's the first amendment to Murphy's Law.

As we all know, Murphy's Law states that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." However few are aware of the amendment that adds, "After everything that could go wrong actually goes wrong a few things that can't go wrong will anyway. ;o)

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt

I've read...

erica jane's picture

That a change of media and presentation can do wonders to get past the blind spot, so to speak. It's worked fairly well for me over the years. I do all my work on the comp. So I print out my stories in a different font entirely and double space them for editing. This really changes the appearance of the text. That, combined with the white text on black background I use on my comp tends to keep me from being blinded to the majority of my errors. It's probably one of those YMMV things.

~And so it goes...

Tricks

erin's picture

I use several tricks to edit my own stuff; one is to read it backwards, paragraph by paragraph or even line by line. Another is to read IT outLOUD with AN arTIfiCIAL rhyTHM. Both disrupt the mechanism in the brain that auto-corrects so one actually SEES what one has written. This is for copyediting/proofreading. For content editing, I let it sit for a week or so and try to read it as if I knew nothing about what I had written. Then I read it again, and again. Good thing I read fast and I am one of the fastest proofreaders anywhere. I got fired once for being too fast, I was making the other copyeditors look bad. Seriously, it was at Ford Aerospace and I was working as a contract proofreader back in the early 80s. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

FYI

I do editing.

Perspective

The great thing about getting older is I achieve a reader's perspective within weeks when it used to take years. Of course, I can't see well enough now to edit.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Teamwork

I try to team with one or more writers and to do each other's proofreading. This way it often goes beyond the simple typos and the stories get much better. :-)

grammatical errors

Hypatia Littlewings's picture

None of them were bad enough to ruin the, and it was pretty obvious what was intended. I've seen just as bad in official releases form major publishing houses, so don't worry about it too much.

>i< ..:::