Author Advice - Writing & Editing 2

You’ve typed the last full stop at the end of your book. At last its finished, you’ve written it!
Wrong, what you have written is the ‘First Draft’ of your book. Now the hard work begins in making sure that what you have written becomes the best you could have written.

Writers Write; Editors Edit.
If you have the misty-eyed dream that somewhere in the publishing process there is somebody dedicated to correcting your poor writing into good writing, then you are in delusion. There is no ‘magic person’ or ‘magic software’ that could change your writing. Its your Writing and You are responsible for how it turns out.
At Instant-Books we Trust Authors so we don’t need ‘Editors’ but you being a ‘Trusted Author’ does mean that it is your responsibility for how your Instant-Books Edition appears.
We expect you to be your own Editor, in fact we expect you to be a Ruthless Editor determined to ensure that your Instant-Books Edition is the best book you can produce.

Spell Check
All of your writing should be ‘Spell Checked’ as part of your normal writing process. Being Instant-Books UK Ltd we like our Instant-Books Editions to use English, as compared to American, spelling. Many ‘Spell Check’ functions have American English as their default setting; we set ours English English, the choice is yours after all its your book.

Proof Read
A ‘Spell Check’ will only look for misspelt words. It will not know that ‘ham’ should have been ‘hat’ so Proof Read everything you have written, correcting where necessary.
Proof Reading on screen is OK but you might find it easier to print off your writing to read it, and it means you can give it to someone else for them to read through. Second, and third, opinions on your writing are a valuable method of improving your first draft; not jst for spelling mistakes but for ‘style and content’ as well.

Editing and More Editing
When ‘Proof Reading’ your writing you should not just be looking to correct any errors, you should be ‘Editing’ your work by constantly looking for ways in which your written description could be improved.
Its often difficult to convince new writers of how important their ‘Editing’ of their own work is to the quality of their final submission. As a ‘Rule of Thumb’ we advise new writers to spend at least as long Editing their work as they took writing it in the first instance.
If you think this is a lot of work for little reward then perhaps you shouldn’t be writing at all. Few first drafts of writing stay that way, the vast majority being improved through the Author’s Editing process. If you think that ‘I’ve written it, so its finished’ almost certainly its not good writing.

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