Isabelle Joshua

Friday, March 11, 2016

I am human therefore I err

I recently saw this comment on Goodreads for a very popular author of a best-selling series.

Q: Was I the only one who found many grammatical and syntactic errors? (I'm just trying to make sure I'm not crazy)

A: Isabelle Joshua While I sometimes find errors in novels I read, I usually am wrapped up in the story that I do not notice as many and I'm not great at grammar as you all probably are. I would like to say though that, please give a girl a break. Even being a published author through a Pub House doesn't mean that typos or errors get missed. Also, some of those could be intentional from the writers POV especially if they are blatant errors like misspelling a word. But the writing and editing process is a difficult one and usually not the writer's best area. And even proofreaders aren't perfect. If you've read the same manuscript more than once, you are bound to miss something. Pls forgive any errors in the above paragraph. I hope you begin reading with a little less critical eye.

I had to comment because the writing process is long, arduous and mind-numbing at times!  After writing and rewriting then rereading your manuscript over 10+ times, you miss stuff.  Even eagle-eyes, which I do not pretend to be at all. My focus is the writing and when I am putting down the words, thoughts and dialog that is in my head it is like I'm a stenographer and I'm just trying to get it down quick enough. So I beseech readers that can be a little critical about grammar, please write a 300+ page story and see if you don't make zillions of mistakes.  And editors and proofreaders are human too and sometimes they've reread the story so many times stuff gets missed.

Hopefully I minimize the errors I make and they are meer comma errors (not noticible to me) but I probably won't.  So all I can really try to do is my best and maybe my story will captivate you enough to overlook or not even notice when I do err.

No comments:

Post a Comment