Just about there!

Just got my 6X9 format from create space, looks good, but the page numbers are small. Reading through it to ensure it's all there and right. Already found two 'minor glitches.' Not horrible, or world ending, but it still bothers me. All that's left after their format is good to go is the cover and a few minor details. Then I hold my breath and let it go to the world.

Somehow, I feel that no matter how many times I read the story, I'll find something.

Depending on the level of editing you will still find problems. I paid for editing and had multiple problems show up later. I'm still finding small things today and seriously considering a revised edition.

One thing that is somewhat helpful is to get the printed copy in hand in advanced and go through with a highlighter and find as many of the obvious errors that you can.

Even so you will likely miss things. The good news is that eventually the readers will find them.(That's the bad news too.)

That much said; depending on certain complexities and the level of substantive editing you can still find problems.
I've recently discovered an entire section where a character name is wrong for an entire chapter. So now I either pretend there are two different characters because its a semi-minor character or I fix it. Unfortunately because the character has a larger part in the next story I have to fix it.

Yeah, there's always going to be something. No book is perfect, whether self-published or trad. There's just no way. All you can do is get it as close to perfect as you can, and let it go. Kind of like raising kids: at some point, you have to let them fly or fall.

Hm. I think that's my philosophical point of the day.

tinkerdan said:

I've recently discovered an entire section where a character name is wrong for an entire chapter. So now I either pretend there are two different characters because its a semi-minor character or I fix it. Unfortunately because the character has a larger part in the next story I have to fix it.

Click to expand...

That's definitely something an editor should have caught. A couple of things that I do there are (1) figure out which spelling the author intends and add it to Word's dictionary for that file, so that other spellings will show up with a red underline, and (2) do a "Find" on both spellings (or all, in some cases) to make sure all instances of the wrong one have been caught.

The biggest thing you can do is have it edited by somebody who isn't you, and even bigger than that is to make sure it's somebody good.

It's one thing to say this::

TheDustyZebra said:

That's definitely something an editor should have caught. A couple of things that I do there are (1) figure out which spelling the author intends and add it to Word's dictionary for that file, so that other spellings will show up with a red underline, and (2) do a "Find" on both spellings (or all, in some cases) to make sure all instances of the wrong one have been caught.

Click to expand...

:: and another to deliver.
I've seen enough errors from several sets of paid professional editors to know that the Onus remains upon the author even for the things they miss.
Both in my own work and other authors I have met and corresponded with.

While I agree that they should have caught that, there are enough characters in the story that this seemed to sprint past betas and my own, my wife's editing and then the publisher's editors. Am I unhappy, yes. I could have caught this just as well back then, as I did now. And I've read it over almost a dozen times now.

Well, there are little things that slip by me, same as any editor, but that's not likely to be one of them, because I have those processes in place to prevent it. It's my job.

As the author, you're predisposed to read it as what you intended rather than what it actually says. My Achilles heel in my own writing is missing words where I cut and pasted something into something else, and then read it as saying what I meant.

@TheDustyZebra I didn't realise you could add it to the dictionary for just one file! How do you do that without having to go back and delete names from your world list every time?

In word you can add just about any word you want in your dictionary-just be careful what you add(I'm not sure how to remove them).
To add a word right click on it and if the drop-down menu has the choice, chose add to dictionary.

Add or edit words in a spell check dictionary - Office Support
Here's a valuable link::

Ah! I've not checked the link, so I may be repeating it here, but I know how to remove saved words in Word!

Find Word Options -- I get to it via the Windows football-like logo thing at the top left of my screen, and Options is at the bottom in its own little box. Hit that and then hit "Proofing" in the menu, and that brings up another menu where you can change auto-correct and the like. Half way down is "Custom Dictionaries" -- hit that and it brings up another box with "Edit Word List" at top right. Hit that, and it brings up all the words you've added, and you can delete individual words or all of them.

I don't know how to add words just for a particular file, though.

With newer versions of Word that have the delightful Ribbon (2010 onwards, maybe 2007 though I've never used that version) you want to click "File" then "Options" and then select "Proofing". You should see a button labelled "Custom dictionaries". You can add new ones (as many as you like) and manage them so you can have a dictionary for each project. I haven't used them for a while so not 100% sure it's the same with the newer ones but with Word 2003 you could have several active at the same time. You should also be able to edit them directly (unless that's changed) as they're essentially just text files.

With Word 2003, the custom dictionary stuff is hidden elsewhere - somewhere on the spelling menu if memory serves (it rarely does).

I believe the same thing can be fudged with Scrivener, too, though I've yet to try it (I think you just rename the file before switching projects and then a new custom dictionary is created when you open another file - not entirely sure yet though).

What they said.

To expand on that, here's a decent link (although it gets a bit complicated in the bit about moving a dictionary from another computer -- I've never tried that) telling the various ways to get there in different versions of Word:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/322198/how-to-add-a-custom-dictionary-in-word

To be honest, I generally just use the one main dictionary, which will only create a problem if someone's character's misspelled name happens to be the same as someone else's character's correctly spelled name that's in my dictionary. It would be a better practice to use a custom one for each file, or preferably each series.

Fair enough! I knew about adding and deleting words, but thought you might have a magical system that I had never heard of.
Also I just noticed the typo in my previous post. I would like a world list, it sounds awesome.

Stable said:

Fair enough! I knew about adding and deleting words, but thought you might have a magical system that I had never heard of.
Also I just noticed the typo in my previous post. I would like a world list, it sounds awesome.

Click to expand...

Well, with all the stuff I've edited, my list does include a fair number of worlds. More ships, though.

Err... I should add that the link above is largely about how to manage the custom lists for each file, so yes, that may be the magical system to which you're referring. It's just that I don't always use it like I probably should.