Proofreading & Bluebells

Hi all,

The photo above is just a reminder of how beautiful bluebells are and how lucky we are to be able to see this wonderful flower every year. They are in bloom at the moment, but they will only be here for a couple of weeks, so do yourself a favour and get out there and have a look at some if you possibly can. While you are there you can also take some photos to look back on in those dark winter days that will be with us all too soon. This one was taken last year in south west Scotland at the back of Logan House Gardens.

Writing
I thought I'd just give you an update about the book that I've just written which explains how to become a freelance writer. The book which include details of six, self-publishing options that are available to authors is now in the proofreading stage. This for me is where the really hard work starts.

One of the reasons that it is hard work is that when I write, I like to get the information down while it's fresh in my mind. I also seem to have dizzy fingers because although I know how to spell most words but the letters come out in the wrong order. I know that some writers advocate rewriting and proofreading the previous days work before they start again but that's not for me. If I tried doing that I don't think I'd get anything done.

Stephen King is one of many authors who think that it's better to write the whole thing and sort the details out later. Well if it's good enough for Stephen King then it's good enough for me.

I remember the joy that came from finishing the writing stage of my first book. I also remember how proud I felt when after proofreading the whole manuscript I gave it to my wife so that she could give it one last check. I of course thought it was perfect and almost dared her to find a single mistake. To my horror she found a mistake on almost every page. This was a revelation to me and I knew straight away that this meant that proofreading was obviously going to be harder than expected.

Now you can call me a nerd if you want, but I worked out the percentage of errors and found that in a manuscript that I thought was ready to go to the printers my wife had revealed a 98% error rate. This was almost as shocking as finding out that there ain't no Santa Claus (sorry if I've burst your bubble but if you're clever enough to read this, then you should know that big fat fellows can't get down no skinny chimneys) and that life doesn't start at forty. There was only one thing for it, I fixed the mistakes and put my proofreading glasses on again. Once more I read the book from cover to cover whilst expecting to find that it was almost perfect but it wasn't. This proofreading exercise revealed an error rate of 68% which is pretty poor. Now you might at this stage think that I was a crap proofreader and perhaps I wasn't the best but I thought I had a good eye for detail.

Anyway, I'll let you into a secret, I read that book fifteen times before I was happy that I'd eliminated every error. It took several weeks and wasn't a task that I'd relish doing again. I certainly won't be proofreading the book I've just written fifteen times and you can find out why in my next writing post.

The moral of this story by the way is don't just check your work once. Leave it for a while and then check it again, you will be surprised what you find.

If you want more details about my first book, "Fishing: Learn from the Tips & Laugh at the Tales" they can be found at my website. You can also download for free some sample pages.Click here for details

While you are there you might want to check out the book Stephen King wrote about writing; whilst recovering from a near fatal road accident. It is called "On Writing" by Stephen King and it is well worth a read.

If you want to see more photos of Scotland or some of my wife's paintings, pop along to our joint website which can be found here.
click here to see our paintings and more.
I'll leave you with a painterly picture of some more bluebells for you to enjoy.