Grammar, spelling and punctuation.

WRITING TIP OF THE WEEK:

- Learn grammar, spelling and punctuation.

You shouldn’t ever pay someone to edit your writing if you plan to publish traditionally. It’s very bad business sense and its going to cause you a lot of distress in the future.

Money should flow TO the writer. You don’t give agents money, you don’t give publishers money—people give you money. This includes paying someone to polish your manuscript before sending it to publishers and agents. You need to know how to do those things yourself.

‘Why?’ Some of you are asking. ‘Publishers and agents do that for you!’. That’s half true—they do, a little bit. But they only want to fix rare, minor problems—the kind of problems you get from a typo, NOT from a complete misunderstanding of how to use a comma correctly.

If you get an agent or publisher, they are going to expect you to produce reasonably polished manuscripts over and over. You can’t keep paying people to do it—not without being a moron anyway—and they’re going to be pretty unimpressed if you keep sending them error riddled drafts.

Its’ easier to learn it now, and do it properly from the start. And it’s good business sense.

Self publishing may be slightly different. So many self published books with potential are ruined because of terrible spelling and grammar. If you are self publishing, you should learn how to edit properly. You should edit to the degree that you expect there will be no more editing before submission, then, if you can, you may pay a professional to go over it one more time in case you missed any small things.

If they have to do lots of hours of work, it will cost you much more. Do the hard work yourself and have someone else polish. Don't treat it like something you can get by without.