I thought I would spend today's **Thoughtful Thursday** reflecting on something personal. I have had quite a few people ask my advice since I started writing and the truth is, I am no expert. Everything I know is from trial and error or research, and I am still learning. With my first book, Bound by Sacrifice: The Road to Ruin, I swear I went over it 60 or more times and the day I held it in my hands for the first time I found a missing word within 15 pages. I was slightly distraught and spent another few weeks combing over the book a few dozen more times and you know what? I am certain there are still errors!

     I am aware that no one is perfect, especially me with my auto-correct brain, which fixes errors as I read them and I want to be the best writer I can be, which I know will take time and a strong determination to constantly try to improve myself. Constructive criticism might be scary for some writers, however, I would have loved it if a few more people would have criticized my first book BEFORE it was released. With that said, I want to give new authors ALL the help I can so that they can avoid all the headaches I had while preparing Bound by Sacrifice. Here are a few things I did wrong that I have seen others do incorrectly as well.


Dialogue - Pick up your favorite book and look at the way conversations are written. It is simple English, but many of us forget the basics of how to write dialogue. You can find an infinite number of links about the right way to write conversations and I almost published my first book with dialogue that wasn't structured correctly. That would have been embarrassing!

Sentence variety - One thing I have noticed about my first book and many books I have read from the self published world lately are short choppy sentences that have the same repetitive structure. I am guilty of this and it is one of the things I have been working on with the books I am editing now. Make your sentences, compound sentences and try not to use the same boring layout for every sentence you write. Again, you can find numerous sites about sentence structure, but here is one to show you what I mean. http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/sntstrct.html

Overuse of a word - Again, guilty here! As you edit your writing, take note of the words you tend to use over and over again, then find a thesaurus and try to look for synonyms that broaden the books vocabulary and improve the readers experience. My overused word is 'but', which isn't always an easy word to replace, so I have been trying to find ways to rework my sentences to make the use of other words more appropriate.

Commas and semicolons - This one is still hard for me. Sometimes editing programs (the free ones) don't find or point these out as often as they are needed or not needed. With commas, I understand when and where to use them better than I do with semicolons, which still elude me. This area of grammar is one I am still unsure of and I have read many different opinions on the issue. Some people say that you can avoid semicolons as an author if you prefer not to use them. I personally find them weird when I am reading a book and they pop up. I mean, I know they are 'correct', but instead of making the sentence flow for me as a reader, they make me pause and they feel out of place. I would love for someone with more experience to send some good references or sites my way to help me to better understand semicolons in fiction. Is it really the author’s choice or do readers look down on an author who chooses to forgo the use of them?

     If you are in a financial place to pay for an editor, I strongly recommend you to dish out the money and avoid the headache of doing all this yourself. But for those of you like me, who can't even afford to pay a freelance editor a few hundred dollars let alone a few thousand to a professional, here are some FREE resources that helped me work through a lot of my grammar/editing issues.

http://grammark.org/  

Grammark is an open source writing aide created by a former college English professor. The site is meant to help students identify grammar issues and learn more about their personal writing habits. It was created for student essays and it uses rules that may not always work with your writing style. However, it can help you find issues like misused words, passive voice, sentence variety, and basic grammar. It doesn't help with things like commas, but it is a great tool to add to your free arsenal of editing programs.




http://www.gingersoftware.com/
 
I originally started using Ginger as a chrome extension. However, when I went to find a link for all of you, I discovered a new free version of the software and I am ecstatic! It will work with almost any browser now and it works for Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It discovers grammar issues and its new features now say it has a personal dictionary for you to customize your names, places, and slang words, as well as a sentence rephraser. When I started using this app, I would copy and paste a chapter at a time into my browser to see the errors which show up in blue and you hover over them to see Ginger's suggestions.




http://www.afterthedeadline.com/
 
After the Deadline is used in the same way I described Ginger's chrome extension. It can be used on several platforms, yet my only experience with it is using it as an extension on chrome. You simply download it, make sure your cursor is in the text area with the text you want to check, and hit 'CTRL+SHIFT+S' to reveal any errors. Again, this is an online extension and you may be able to find a download for your Word or other programs, I have not tried that.


     There are several different editing software programs you can find that have free trials. I used two of them once I felt like my book was ready and I had worn out all the other programs. 
     I used  CorrectEnglish and Grammarly , which each had a one week trial. I did one the first week and one the next, canceling my subscriptions once the week was up to avoid the high-priced membership fees. Just make sure you are as ready as you can be before using this option, because most of them only give you a week trial period. If you can't finish your edits within that week, you are either paying full price or unable to completely edit your books with the help of these programs. They don't always offer free trials so good luck!

     Of course, you can always use your basic Word or Open Office spell checks as well, but they will not find ALL the errors. Even using everything I have suggested together is not as effective as a real editor with experience. One last thing that I did, which was suggested to me from several other authors and sites I read, is the use of Beta Readers! You can find some amazing people who love to read so much that they are willing to help you with your books for free as long as they get to read them. It is a mutually beneficial relationship and you may find some of your first fans among these wonderful people. There are sites I have heard of where you can find people who claim to be professional Beta Readers, I have not looked into this option. Although, I would love to know about any experiences other authors have had with these groups.

     Like I said, NO ONE is perfect and I definitely am NOT, still I want to help aspiring authors as much as possible because it is a tough world out there. Everyone is a critic and no matter how good your work is, someone will dislike it. My goal in the future is to make sure that very few people dislike my work for editing/grammar issues. Fine, you don't like my characters, style, descriptions, cliffhangers, or whatever little thing catches against your personal taste, but I am hoping to become the type of self published author who is rarely criticized for my poor use of the English language.

     If I help at least one person with this blog post, it was worth it! If you are an author with insight on common newbie mistakes, share them with us in the comments.