Anyone who has ever read any of my blog posts has probably come to the realization that I am not an editor.

I am not an editor.

(Nor do I wish to be one.)

I love and value my editors, and I employ them heavily on my books, but not at all on my website blog posts. Some of the pages of this website are comprised entirely of blog posts related to that topic. Grammar Nazis and anyone sensitive to editing errors, read this website at your own risk.

Weaknesses

Many authors become authors because they are especially good at English and all things writing related. However, this is not the case with me. While it’s true that I received mostly A’s in English, I have an incredible short-term memory and that’s exactly where all those grammar rules went. I’ve never been good at anything English grammar related. In fact, to be blunt, I suck at it. For those of you who are good-in-all-things-grammar-related, please feel free to take a moment now to feel superior.

Strengths

My true gifts have always been in reading, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. As it turns out, that seems to be what’s necessary to spin a good tale. The business end of things, like marketing, also seems to come easily to me. We all have strengths and weaknesses and I’ve learned in life it’s best to play to your strengths. I’ve also learned that it’s better to partner with people whose strengths are in the areas of your weaknesses, which explains why I love my editors so much.

Editing Process

For those interested, the development and editing process for my books is as follows:

  1. Outline
  2. Rough Draft
  3. Revisions 1 – 6
    • plot refinement
    • character development
    • focus on action
    • focus on sexy scenes
    • focus on world building and descriptions
    • focus on lovely language in general
  4. Clean-up (my loose editing with editing programs)
  5. Beta Reader Revisions (Beta Team)
  6. First Full Edit (Editor 1)
  7. Light Edit (Editor 2)
  8. Proofing (Editor 3)

Yes, in an effort to produce the highest quality work possible, I actually revise each story that many times and send them to that many editors.

In contrast, on my website blog posts you can expect me to click publish too early, revise regularly, make tons of phonetic spelling errors and typos, rearrange sentences and leave hanging pieces, and you will find a general mess at times. After several iterations I usually get things looking pretty good but I’m not fanatic about it as I’d rather put that time into polishing my books.

Thank you for not continually pointing out editing errors on my website blog posts. However, if you find editing errors in my books, by all means, criticize away. When you’re paying for my work, you have a right to expect it’s error free, which is why I employ such a thorough and multilevel editing process on my published work.

Best,

Lilo