Grammar Is A Must

Edit! Edit! Edit! Don’t Cheat the Hand that Reads You— Grammar is a must By D.L. Fairchild Whether you’re an author looking for a traditional publisher, or someone who wants to try their hand at self-publishing, you must still adhere to the same rules of grammar. It’s easier than you think. Unfortunately, there are people, who claim to be writers, who write articles and give advice to new aspiring authors to not worry about grammar. Telling writers to do this is the equivalent of telling someone who wants to be a mechanic not to worry about putting all the bolts, belts and grease in the right places on an engine. Would you want to drive the car put back together by that mechanic? If you are a self-publishing writer, you need to pay more attention to grammar than any writer published by a traditional publisher. Now, I don’t mean to frighten anyone away from writing because I understand that grammar can be an overwhelming task. No worries, I will provide some suggestions on how to make sure your book follows proper grammar, even if you don’t consider grammar your strength. But first, I need to point out why your writing must be as grammatically correct as possible. It is the writer’s duty and job to make order out of chaos. You want your book to be published fast, I know, but consider that the average time for a book to get published through a traditional publisher can take up to three years. That’s three years of editing, and often the publisher will force the writer to alter their content to what they believe will sell. A self-publishing author can publish in as little as a month, but just because they can, doesn’t mean they should. Invest the time, possibly three to four months, maybe less or maybe more, to make your book better. Your book will be available for a long time, don’t cut corners. The most embarrassing thing in writing is to open your book to the first page and smack yourself and ask “How did I miss that.” Just because you may be a new writer, doesn’t mean you have to appear inexperienced. People don’t read confusing books and say “Well, the grammar’s bad, but it’s okay because this is this author’s first book. I bet the next one will be better.” No, they say “whoa, this book sucks. I’ll make sure to tell my friends not to waste their money on this author.”

Grammar is the key to clarity You’re an author who has spent a lot of effort and hours in front of a keyboard, or maybe even more hours in front of a typewriter, and you’ve produced a great idea for a story. If you put one comma out of place in a sentence, the entire sentence can change the meaning from what you want your readers to understand. If you leave out a comma, the sentence can become confusing. What you wanted to be two ideas, in a sentence, can become one. Leave out a modifier, a comma and an apostrophe from one paragraph and the entire passage, even page or chapter, can confuse and annoy the reader. Litter your entire manuscript with these mistakes, and your story is not portraying the ideas you think you wrote about. In fact, your neglect of grammar betrays your story and no one gets the same tale you’re trying to tell them. Your story will fall apart. Confused readers do not make for repeat readers for one confusing book, let alone for any additional books by the same author. More often than not, confused

readers will not finish reading even one of the books you wrote if your grammar makes the story too difficult to read and understand. Why bother writing a story if you don’t want people to understand it? Remember, if you’re publishing a story, you’re publishing it for other people to read. Write it for an audience then, not just for yourself. Enjoy writing it, but take the responsibility to allow your readers that same enjoyment too.

Bad Grammar gives self-publishing authors bad reputations by name alone One of the reasons that even good self-published writers get bad reps is because many people who self-publish refuse to follow simple grammatical rules. Self-publishing companies or Print on Demand publishers don’t offer the same editorial services as traditional publishers. They make you pay for editing services, which, quite honestly, some writers should use, especially if they have a weak background in grammar. Authors published through traditional publishing companies have unlimited editing resources to point out their mistakes and to help them produce a better book, and the company pays for them. Self-publishing authors don’t have that luxury so they have to work harder. Critics will not pick up many self-published books simply because they are self-published and they’ve read a lot of poorly written self-published books, even if they have a good story behind it.

So here’s the bottom line: You are a writer and your job is to edit what you write. Any writer who knows what it is to be successful, or knows how to produce the highest quality of stories, will tell you that the most important step to writing is editing. Editing is not a thing you do simply by reading through your manuscript once to make passages sound better to you. Editing is making your story clear for every reader, and it is impossible to make a story clear if you ignore or allow grammar to intimidate you. You do not have to be a grammarian in English to produce work with strong grammar. Let me tell you: I hold a bachelors in English, a bachelors in journalism, a masters of fine arts in English. I’ve been an editor for a literary journal, an editor in chief for a newspaper, a news reporter for four different magazines; I’ve published short stories and have a novel in the publishing works; I’ve produced and written stage plays and screenplays; and I write my own comedy routines for stage. I know English grammar. When I write, my words do not fall grammatically correct and perfect on the page, or even close to being perfect. In fact, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing at all when it comes to English. But I edit. You must edit if you want readers to take your work seriously. If you don’t care about your work, fine, don’t take the effort. But why are you bothering then? And why are you giving good honest writers a bad name? As harsh as the following statement sounds, this is the truth and the reality of the situation, no matter how much some people want to sugar coat it: if you do not edit, you are a lazy writer. If you do not edit, you are NOT a writer. The editing process should be highly time consuming. If you write a book and read through it once or even twice by yourself, you have done it incorrectly. Don’t like how that sounds? Then don’t stop writing now, finish your book. Edit it. It sounds overwhelming, but it shouldn’t be.

The most difficult part of editing The most overwhelming aspect about editing should be one thing and one thing only, patience. Be patient. Be patient! BE PATIENT! You didn’t write your book in an hour, you shouldn’t expect to edit it in an hour. If you need something to help you feel that you are being productive during the editing process. Keep writing, not on your book, but on smaller projects, on another big project, on a screenplay, in a journal or anything that requires you to write and use your creativity, even if it’s something that only you think you’ll read. There’s no rule that says you can only work on one project at a time. So be patient.

You are not a trustworthy source to judge your writing Don’t trust yourself to know that your words are presenting your story clearly. You’ve spent a lot of hours creating these words and molding them into what you want them to sound like. Often, those words do not sound the way you think they do, and no matter how many times you reread passages, your mind may still read them only one way. Join a writers group, a solid one, and present passages or chapters from your story for others to read, and listen to their feedback. Do this as you write even, rather than wait for the entire book to be finished. This is a place where you can receive feedback, both positive and negative, about your work, from people who know what it’s like to want to produce a good piece of writing. You should look at this process as a way to improve your book, not to defend it. If you find yourself defending what you wrote, then you did not write it as clearly as you thought and you should consider what others have said to help make it clearer. I will write more on writers group next time, but suffice to say this: in a writers group, where your work is being considered, your job is to shut up? When you open your mouth to justify or defend, you undermine the very reason that you need feedback and people will stop being honest with you. Do it! This is for authors who are absolutely terrified of having people critique your work—Do it! I too was afraid of this, thought I would wet my pants at what people would say. Nothing has been more beneficial to my writing than this practice. If you do it right, you will learn. But, if you are still afraid of this, which happens, there are other tools you can use to learn about your manuscript. Universities have on-campus and free tutoring centers that will help anyone who needs help. These services offer help from simple proof-reading, giving one-on-one instruction or even making suggestions that may help you decide a better way to present an idea. Invest time and money in tools. Invest in a current handbook, a stylebook, a dictionary and a thesaurus and don’t be afraid to look up rules if you’re not sure how to follow a rule. Use the internet. There are a lot of internet tutoring sites that will come right out and answer any question about English grammar. And if this turns out to be time consuming, then you are doing it right. Editing is not a quick fix, but it will become faster as you progress. Hand off your manuscript. If you absolutely feel overwhelmed and want to throw your hands up at the sound of the words ‘editing’ and ‘grammar,’ then consider hiring someone to edit your work. Or ask your friends to help. You might be

surprised how many of them have experience in this practice. Let them edit it, and be patient as they call you constantly asking you about what you’re trying to say. If you do this, whether you like it or not, you will learn rules to grammar. Sometimes, it is necessary to hand your text off to someone who knows grammatical ruling. So even if you don’t know good grammar, you have no excuse to not find someone who does, who can edit and who can teach you through the entire process. And remember, always settle a difference of opinion with a dictionary, a stylebook or a handbook. If you’re arguing, one of you isn’t right and all parties involved need to look up the ruling. It really is that easy. If you don’t know how, hand it to someone who does.

Suggestions for authors who perform their own editing. When I was an editor in chief a simple 500-word story went through a write and edit by the author, then an edit by a section copy editor, then by a staff editor, then it was put on paper and it would be printed up and edited time and time again until there were no more editing marks on the page. Sometimes the page would print eight or nine times. When that was done the section copy editor then read through until they were satisfied of no errors, then they handed their page of stories off to the managing editor who read through and made edits if needed. And THEN, the editor in chief got it and had to approve the page of stories. If the chief didn’t approve, the page went back to the section editor. And that was for one full singlespaced page of text. Take the same diligence to keep your story strong. This is a suggestion of steps to follow for an editing process. This is the process I follow. 1—Write your book. 2—don’t look at your manuscript for a few days. 3—Edit the entire story once for grammar that you know. Don’t try take on the whole thing at once or you will want to scream. Read the entire manuscript from beginning to end and edit only for punctuation and grammar that you’re sure you know and look up some small things that you’re not sure about. 4—Let at least two or three people you trust, preferably people with English grammar experience, read your manuscript and make comments on anything they want to. These people, guaranteed, will open your eyes to ways that will improve your writing and point out holes in your story. Once you get back all of their feedback, read ALL of their comments and consider whether those comments will add or detract from the story, and use them accordingly to improve your book. Remember, these people represent others who will read your work for real and who do not know you or owe you any loyalty as a reader whatsoever. Do not rush these editors!!!! They are doing you a favor by reading your manuscript, and unless you plan to pay them, this is on their time. 5—Once you have edited, sent your manuscript to other people for comments, sat in writers groups, etc, then you can go through your entire document again and make appropriate changes based on reader/editor comments.

6—Go through your entire document once more, and use spelling and grammar check only. Keep in mind that grammar checks are not always correct and that it offers suggestions only. 7—Go through your manuscript again, yes again, on the computer, focusing on cutting out wordiness and punctuation (yes grammar check will miss it). As you read, make notes of items you think you might want to go back and change, especially if you already read past a point in your story that you realize you want to change. Keep accurate notes that will tell you exactly what you want to do— sometimes one word instruction, that you’re sure that you’ll understand later, will not make sense in the slightest when you look at it down the road. 8—Once you do this read through, go through your notes and make your changes from those notes. Check them off using a highlighter. 9—Read through again, on the computer, this time out loud. Reading out loud can point out a lot of errors in clarity. Imagine that you are reading passages out loud at literary conferences and conventions. Imagine that you wouldn’t want your words to sound confusing in front of a bunch of people. I promise, every time that you read through your manuscript, to this point, you will find plenty of details that need to be corrected, that you want to change and that you can’t believe you overlooked. By now, you can see that you will be making several run-throughs with your manuscript. Every run through should be saved as a new copy of your book. If you delete a passage and decide you want it back, if you don’t save often, you will have to rewrite the passage from memory. I make a new full save every day. 10—Now, print up a hard copy of your manuscript and break out the red pen, yes red. People say red is offensive, this is a load of crap. Red sticks out and you can read the notes. The only people who take offense at red ink are undisciplined people who can’t accept their work isn’t perfect. I’ve never known red ink to be the cause of emotional distress. Read through each page one at a time and make editing notes. At the end of each page, go through and make the corrections to your document. Don’t wait to the end of each chapter, or the book to make the changes because you might not remember what a note meant. Do it after each page, while the notes are fresh. This is a step that should be considered the greatest step in editing. Words appear different on physical paper than they do on your computer screen. Do not think you can accomplish this by only reading the computer screen. You will be sorely disappointed. Some people will do this process several times until the red editing marks stop appearing on the pages. That’s up to you. I do this maybe once or twice. By this point you should have caught most, if not all of the grammatical errors. But you’re not done yet. 11—Go back to the computer and turn on your hidden characters and run a search for double spaces and spaces after a period but before a hard return. Fix these. Check to make sure your tabs are aligned properly. If you don’t know how to format things, your writing program may be able to help you. If it can’t, the internet may be able to. Don’t be afraid to use help features such as these. Search all of the uses of ‘your’ and ‘you’re’, ‘it’s’ and ‘its, ‘they’re,’ ‘There’ and ‘their,’ and any commonly misused words you know you have a history of misusing. Maybe it’s just

a word that you want to check to be safe. This is a good time to check them. A lot of writers don’t realize that extra spaces can cause a printer a lot of problems. 12—Read through your document again, on the computer, this time for entertainment purposes. Read slowly, as reading fast can scan past small details, and when something arises that doesn’t seem to flow, sounds confusing, or doesn’t seem to fit the feeling of your story, make changes to these items to make it even clearer. If you’re finding the same word being repeated over and over, this is a good time to break out a thesaurus, to add variety, or a dictionary to ensure you’re using the word properly. Reread any passage you rewrite once or twice to make sure you don’t have to make more corrections later. 13—Once you’ve done this, read it again. This time focusing on entertainment purposes as well. Enjoy your story and if something jumps out that jars that entertainment for you, it will jar it for your readers as well. If something jumps out, change it to your liking, until you’re satisfied. 14—Let another set of eyes read your manuscript again, someone who understands editing, and don’t set your eyes on your story until you hear back from this reader. Tell them, they can make corrections to small things that need obvious changes, such as having duplicate duplicate words in your manuscript that you overlooked. They can verify spelling, check format, but not if they’re going to guess at it, they need to be able to back up what they change. They are not, under any circumstances to rearrange or reorder even one word. They’re not making notes this time and you should expect phone calls or emails asking you about certain passages. They should be asking you “Is this what it’s supposed to say?” 15—Take a break!!! 16—When you get the manuscript back, read it again! If you read through without making a lot of corrections, you may be finished. By this time, you should not be making any alterations to the actual story itself, just the presentation. 17—When you think you are finished, READ IT ONE MORE TIME. This may seem like a lot of times to read your work, but consider this: In writing the last page of Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway rewrote the last page 39 times—not on a computer, but on a typewriter. Editing may seem tedious, but it’s better to take time to make a strong appearing story than to rashly drop unedited work that people will dismiss as garbage onto the bookshelves. As I mentioned earlier, some writers are giving bad advice, telling would-beauthors that ignoring grammar is a good way to start a book because your writing will improve over time. Yes, your writing will improve over time, but if you do not catch grammatical mistakes in the beginning, you are only practicing to use them in the future and your writing will improve much more slowly than if you would take the time to fix them. Additionally, by the time you finally do learn to use grammar properly, your reputation as a clear writer may be so ruined that you’ll have no chance to show people how good you are. Do not lie to yourself, unless you know the writer, you will not finish a book by another author who writes with poor grammar or sounds confusing. Consider this: the average person must work two to three hours at a job to be able to pay for

a new book at full-price. That’s two to three hours of their time they have given up for you, to buy your book for entertainment. Don’t repay them for that sacrifice by giving them something that is unprepared. We are not slick used car salesmen. We are writers and writers always consider grammar. If you bought a DVD player off the shelf at the electronics store and you found the buttons were missing because the assembler was told he’d learn to put the buttons on later, you would take the machine back and tell the store you were ripped off. Worse, you would feel ripped off. Don’t rip off your readers and customers. Be patient. Always edit. Anyone who says otherwise, isn’t a disciplined writer and you, through taking time to edit, are a more respectable writer than he or she who tells you not to worry. Remember, a real writer edits. A lazy writer does not and tells people not to. Editing should make up the biggest and most difficult part of writing. A writer’s job is not to merely tell a story and have fun doing it. A writer’s job is to make order out of chaos. And if you do it right, you will gain respect and readership.