Why Line Editing?

Ever wonder why the advice from many authors is to always get some impartial qualified person to go line by line through your manuscript? Even after you have edited and re-edited your perfect handiwork many times?

Over the years I’ve written many documents from important letters to essential reports for my work to opinion pieces published in newspapers. I thoroughly reviewed almost all of them many times to eliminate anything that might distract it from their intended purpose. I considered myself proficient at finding errors and making quality improvements. 

I hired a line editor to review my first Jennifer Parsons novel, Saga of Silver Springs. I was amazed at just how far off the mark my self-editing had been. I knew I may not be up to speed on all thing’s grammar, story consistency and understandability but I was satisfied that I could do no better. So I sent it to a line editor. 

I don’t really know what I expected but I was surprised at the number of corrections the editor recommended. The insight those authors recommending an outside review proved to be spot on.

Then I made a mistake by not following their advice relating to reviewing my editor’s suggestions. That is, review each and every suggestion. Don’t just hit the accept all suggestions link. True almost all of the recommended corrections improved my manuscript. However, when I later did the final word by word review, I discovered that not hitting the accept all link would have resulted in a better end product. Clearly, I missed out on making a few changes to the editor’s suggestions that could have made my book better.

In short, if you go to the expense of hiring an editor, don’t blindly accept every suggestion made. Determine if altering some, even rejecting some might be the right course of action.

I did a much better job of it for my latest book, Saga of Crow’s Landing. I’m sure that if I took a bit more time, I could have done a better job of it. 

There were at least two regrettable reasons working against me taking more time at this part of my publishing process. First going over my work yet one more time takes a toll on me. As much as I love what I write, it gets kind of old continually going over it to see if more corrections are needed. And second my eagerness to get my book on the shelves of bookstores fights against slowing the process down.

As a pilot I learned that many, many fatal accidents occur when the desire to get where you want to go overrides your need to make sure the weather will permit a safe journey. So, control these urges and make sure you’re ready to move on.

Having said all of that, I am eager to move my book along its journey. There’s metadata to devise, the book summary to write, a cover to design, an e-book to format, and many other steps needed to be taken before I can sit back and wait for it to hit the shelves. Keep checking to see how it’s going.