Tag: editing

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My Weekly Writing Activity

Loose keyboard keys
Keys I typed this week

For the fun of it, here’s my Grammarly stats for last week:

You were more productive than 99% of Grammarly users: 74,475 words checked

You were more accurate than 90% of Grammarly users: 772 alerts shown

You used more unique words than 97% of Grammarly users: 2,196 unique words used

 

And here’s my reasons and excuses:

Production: I wrote a short story and checked it twice. That was about 15k words total. I’m also making a final pass through Cyber-Witch’s 90k words prior to placing the novel on Kindle. That accounts for the rest of the Grammarly count. (I’m not done with Cyber-Witch yet, so I’ve got to put more text into the Grammarly editor.)

Problems: My, most, serious, problem, is, with, commas <sigh>.

On the good side, most of the alerts were due to writing dialogue with a lot of slang — can’t have all my characters speak perfectly.

The next issue is that Grammarly hates passive voice, but there are times when something happens to a character and it’s not their fault. If they’re being acted upon, they’re passive and I’m going to use passive voice at that time.

Namaste,

Eric

 

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A Good Editor Helps

I’m nearing the release date (February, 2016) for my next story, Heart of Fire – Time of Ice. It’s a sci-fi/time-travel/adventure/romance that has my pre-readers responding enthusiastically. This story is much better for having been through a thorough edit. I’m so grateful to 3P Editing for their good work that I want to give them credit.

I’ve been a writer for nearly my whole life. I hold a Ph.D. in Psychology, and was trained to write scientific reports. I’ve also worked for a major publishing house. Many years ago, I wrote a book that ended up sitting in a box in my closet. That was in the pre-indie publishing days and I couldn’t find anyone who was interested in the story. Once I understood the opportunity offered by indie-publishing, I self-published a non-fiction, humorous book based on my work experience. A couple of years ago, I finally decided to start writing fiction again. I thought I knew how to write well. After publishing three science fiction novels, I discovered 3P Editing. Previously, I had avoided hiring editors. My experiences with a publishing house had shown me that they can be good, bad, or indifferent. I was reluctant to hire someone who would charge me more than I might actually make from book sales and who might not deliver the quality result that I needed.

An accidental meeting with another author who was very happy with 3P’s work convinced me to hire them to edit my fourth book. Their price was very reasonable and the results were outstanding. In a series of three passes, 3P found grammatical errors, corrected punctuation (commas are somewhat mysterious to me), and made gentle, but important suggestions on wording, scenes, characterization, and plot sequences. I adopted nearly all of their suggestions, and my story is now far more readable and enjoyable as a result. My pre-readers have been pleased. I knew the story was good when one person missed work in order to finish the book.

My conclusion? It’s simple. I will continue to use 3P and am in the process of having them edit my previous books. I highly suggest that if you’re an author you should consider their services.

Namaste.

Eric

Oh, BTW You can contact them here: mailto:3pediting@gmail.com