Brief Writer Rant!

Okay, so. Not to get up on a soapbox or anything, but really. When I send a manuscript into a publisher, a professional publisher, I expect a few things. I expect an appropriate cover, I expect timeliness with regard to edits and proofreading and galleys, and I expect for said editor to do more than change my punctuation so that it aligns with the house style. Exchanging curly quotation marks for straight and handing the manuscript back to me? That's doing both of us a disservice. Especially since I went through the story again--my own story--and found numerous word repetitions, incorrect and misspelled words, inaccurate and lazy phrasing, and minor plot holes. On my own. After checking it twice before I sent it in in the first place.

I'm not a perfect writer! Everybody who reads my blog serials understands that intimately (hi guys, sorry I'm so lame sometimes!). I want to put out a good product, I want to make something I can be proud of, and above all I want the chance to improve. When my editor just pats me on the back and says, "Nice, oh and maybe do this one thing," I'm left feeling like they didn't bother to read the damn thing. A coauthor and I just killed a 90k word novel because we didn't feel like we could make it good enough to be publishable. I would rather slash and burn my own work than slap a smile on it and call it good enough. Good enough is poison. There is no good enough, it's either good or something needs to be done to make it that way.

In that same vein, I'm getting to the point where I'm very picky about where I publish. The place I used to pin all my hopes and dreams on has essentially sunk, and now I'm figuring out what to do with myself. I'm working my ass off to write things that will take me to the next level, while learning to self-publish, keeping busy on the blog and wooing bigger presses. It's a two-way street between writers and publishers, especially in this age of digital wonders. You might be reading my stuff to evaluate whether or not you want to publish it, but I'm also evaluating you. I'm evaluating your responsiveness, your dedication to your product and how you market my work.

I like all of my current publishers, and these latest issues have all been addressed, but I was pretty disappointed to see that they needed to be addressed in the first place. If I could self-edit everything perfectly, then I'd either be a goddamn genius or have delusions of grandeur. I need my editors. Don't cut and run on me, guys.

Well. This wasn't brief at all. Sorry! Rant over.