| “Everyone makes mistakes, that’s why they put erasers on pencils.” The sage Lenny once said this on a memorable Simpsons episode with Frank Grimes. And oh, my. When one writes hundreds of thousands of words in a series of novels, the mistakes will add up. I swear I know the difference between their, there, and they’re. But the wrong words, the wrong grammar, and the wrong style will indeed sneak in. I usually make several edit runs through my novels as I write them. I read them in a weekly writers workshop group on Zoom, which is totally great because you can share your screen while you’re reading aloud. Additionally, I make use of an editor for my novels who finds all kinds of oops items. (Hi, Sarah.) And just this past week, also I bought an editing program called Pro Writing Aid. It’s caught a lot of errors that hid in plain sight and that I flat out made the wrong choice without knowing it. I’m absolutely sure that errors will make it into my works, which isn’t ideal, but by no means immutable. That’s the glory of indie publishing with ebooks and print on demand. If you find mistakes, you just correct them, and upload an updated version. The ultimate aim is to get it right the first time, but like the pencil in Lenny’s quote, editing is the eraser to fix that mistake. |
| Recommendation Corner |
| Wheel of Time on Amazon Prime: I had read the first five books in Robert Jordan’s magnum opus about 25 years ago. I liked them a great deal, and I know they influenced my storytelling, but I decided I wanted to wait until Jordan finally finished them. When Brandon Sanderson took them over and finished them, my brother and a couple cousins told me it was all quite good, but I just didn’t have the motivation to dive into them again. I do now. The new streaming series is most engaging after the choppy first episode. It’s like Game of Thrones, except magic is much more of a thing and friendship is valued more than political maneuvers, at least initially. I didn’t care for a particular character’s actions that deviated from the books, but it’s a minor quibble. I’m enjoying it so far. The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie: I do love this series despite all the terrible things that happen to some characters and the worse things that others inflict. The Great Change sweeps in a revolution that starts like the American one, then devolves into something worse than the French one. King Orso continues to be my favorite character with his fatalistic good humor. Rikke is also a strong character in this installment. She makes a lot of right choices that still lead to pain. The narration by Steven Pacey is varied for all of the characters on the audio book version. As long as Abercrombie keeps up this level of excellence, I will continue to recommend all the books in this series. Fantastic yarns, one and all. |
| That’s all for this time. Stay smart. Stay safe. Jim |
