I pride myself on being a better writer than most people. This is a conceit I believe most writers hold, even if they won't cop to it openly. There's a part of us that sighs when we run across a piece of writing that's out of sorts, for we just know we would've written it better. Whether it be spelling, or grammar, or just the way the sentence is worded, we're all so certain that it would've been perfect if we'd written it rather than the poor soul who just doesn't have our knack for stringing words together.
However, there's often a difference between this conceit and reality. And sometimes it smacks us in the face pretty hard.
I've been reviewing the proof for Akeldama, confident that this was merely a formality. After all, I've edited the hell out of this thing, so this was just to help me bask in the glow of my brilliance, right? This was the culmination of a project several years in the making, and I needed merely to sit back and revel that I finally had a physical copy of my work.
Wrong!
Much to my dismay, I've managed to find over a dozen mistakes in the work. I was already annoyed previously when I found mistakes I was certain didn't exist, so this came as an even bigger blow to my ego. Yes, the majority of what I've found is minor, like writing "rocks" instead of "rock" or "screeching" instead of "screeched," but there was one sentence that had to be totally re-done because I wrote it as a statement instead of as the question it was meant to be. I found myself growing angrier as I continued to review the book, upset with myself that I somehow missed these points during the previous gazillion rounds of editing.
Needless to say, the process has helped shock me back into humility. Sure, I could probably let it go since there are so few errors in the 340 pages, and most people wouldn't even notice, but I'd know they were there. Further, leaving in such stuff would show a lack of professionalism and could get Akeldama written off as yet another sloppy indie job. And pretending people wouldn't notice may just be another point of arrogance since I tend to notice these kinds of things when I read. For example, I love Williams Forstchen's novel One Second After. However, whether because he didn't know any better or because he was just stupid, Forstchen consistently wrote the contraction "could've" as "could of," and it drove me bananas every time I read it, so what kind of hypocrite, not to mention hack, would I be if I just let the stuff I wrote contain such errors?
The process has been effective in reminding me that I'm not as good as I think I am. It seems like every time my arrogance starts to ride up, something comes along to knock it back down, and this has surely done it. Akeldama is now in the process of (what I hope to be) the final revisions before my release date. I wonder what else will come along to remind me to try and stay humble...
However, there's often a difference between this conceit and reality. And sometimes it smacks us in the face pretty hard.
I've been reviewing the proof for Akeldama, confident that this was merely a formality. After all, I've edited the hell out of this thing, so this was just to help me bask in the glow of my brilliance, right? This was the culmination of a project several years in the making, and I needed merely to sit back and revel that I finally had a physical copy of my work.
Wrong!
Much to my dismay, I've managed to find over a dozen mistakes in the work. I was already annoyed previously when I found mistakes I was certain didn't exist, so this came as an even bigger blow to my ego. Yes, the majority of what I've found is minor, like writing "rocks" instead of "rock" or "screeching" instead of "screeched," but there was one sentence that had to be totally re-done because I wrote it as a statement instead of as the question it was meant to be. I found myself growing angrier as I continued to review the book, upset with myself that I somehow missed these points during the previous gazillion rounds of editing.
Needless to say, the process has helped shock me back into humility. Sure, I could probably let it go since there are so few errors in the 340 pages, and most people wouldn't even notice, but I'd know they were there. Further, leaving in such stuff would show a lack of professionalism and could get Akeldama written off as yet another sloppy indie job. And pretending people wouldn't notice may just be another point of arrogance since I tend to notice these kinds of things when I read. For example, I love Williams Forstchen's novel One Second After. However, whether because he didn't know any better or because he was just stupid, Forstchen consistently wrote the contraction "could've" as "could of," and it drove me bananas every time I read it, so what kind of hypocrite, not to mention hack, would I be if I just let the stuff I wrote contain such errors?
The process has been effective in reminding me that I'm not as good as I think I am. It seems like every time my arrogance starts to ride up, something comes along to knock it back down, and this has surely done it. Akeldama is now in the process of (what I hope to be) the final revisions before my release date. I wonder what else will come along to remind me to try and stay humble...
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