Sucker Punch Part Deux

Over the course of the next two weeks it became apparent I had somehow (I still don’t know how) hurt myself. I have no clue how it happened. There was never any moment of lifting my overstuffed briefcase out of the back seat of my car and feeling anything strange, never any moment at the gym that gave me pause. But an MRI revealed bulging disks at the L3 and L4 positions in my lower spine. A visit to a pain doctor led to a diagnosis of pinched nerves. This amazing and talented healer could tell just from my description of the path of the pain and numbness down my leg exactly which nerves.

As I sat in his outer office waiting my turn to be seen a parade of damaged people limped and wobbled through; victims of car crashes and on-the-job injuries, some so dire mine paled by comparison. It made me acutely aware of the amount of physical pain many people must endure. I had hope that mine would abate at some point, but it became clear that for some, it would never go away. What must that be like? 

As a writer I am used to letting my mind wander down strange paths and into dark corners in the pursuit of a character’s inner life, but the thought of living with the kind of overwhelming pain I had recently experienced—on a chronic basis—was difficult to examine too closely.

During those first two weeks I was almost completely helpless. My husband had to take care of me, helping me to the bathroom, helping me dress myself, and making all our meals by himself. Our house is two-story and stairs were non-negotiable, so he made up the bed for me in our daughter’s old room downstairs, then slept with his phone beside him, in case he was needed during the night. I tried not to wake him. He was doing a lot to care for me, on top of his day job.

My daughter drove all the long way to my home from her home in Scottsdale, and met with clients for me when I was unable. She had worked as my assistant briefly when she was younger and now that experience proved to be a blessing. She filled in for me without question or complaint, even though she is enrolled at ASU, and is employed as the manager of two sports rehab clinics. She also drove me to a doctor appointment, as did my son. I have been pleasantly amazed at how giving and selfless the people around me have been. My friend Diana offered to pick me up for the monthly meeting of our workshop without me even having to ask. Near the end of the meeting she turned to me and asked if I would be able to stand after sitting so long, which stunned me, because I’d just been privately wondering the same thing. (I was able to stand, but this had been the longest I’d sat up in a chair since the ‘event’.) Am I suggesting she’s clairvoyant? Not at all; just empathic. She is obviously able to put herself in another’s place, and know what they are feeling.

And of course I will never forget my neighbor Laura sending over dinner the evening we got home from the emergency room. I know she doesn’t expect anything in return, but I’m going to think of something.

As of writing this I am nearly recovered. I have some numbness and slight paralysis in my right leg that diminishes with each day that passes. I will walk with a cane for a while longer, but eventually I know I will be able to put it aside and get on with my life as usual. But I hope I never forget this experience, because it has taught me a new, deeper level of compassion and appreciation for others. A gratefulness for those around me who selflessly gave me help when it was needed, and a thankfulness for the health I have. Those are the life lessons I will hold close and cherish.

Next week: My Lucky 7 Post. Stop by to get a sneak peek at 7 lines from Sword of Mordrey.

Sucker Punch

I thought March would be a month of writerly delights. No less than three weekends were planned, all centering on what I enjoy best. The first of these was the much anticipated Tucson Festival of Books, a weekend long writer’s conference/book fair I’d been looking forward to ever since attending it the year prior and having such a grand time. Getting there was to be a fun road trip with friends Char, Diana, and LaDonna, all serious writers, and interesting people.

For a lover of books the TFB is a kind of high desert Nirvana. This year’s schedule included the likes of Alice Hoffman, Elmore Leonard and Jenna Blum. My friends in the ANWW and I planned to have dinner together Saturday evening, and a few of us would probably spend Sunday morning sipping lattes in some campus coffee shop or another, before a second delicious day of everything bookish. I would also finally get to meet fellow Arizonian Twitter writers, Melissa Crytzer Fry and Jessica McCann in the ‘real world’.

The following weekend in March was the Saturday meeting of the ANWW…always a weekend I look forward to with anticipation and joy.

The third Saturday would be spent in the Phoenix living room of my dear friend Trish, an awesome writer who organizes and hosts a Pulitzer book study group that is attended by writers. Again, the conversation here would center around everything I love best to discuss: novels and writing.

Those are the events that were supposed to happen. Here’s what actually did.

In February March shimmered on the horizon of my life like a literary oasis. I dragged my small overnight suitcase out from storage and made reservations for a room to share in Tucson with Diana. I worked diligently to wrap up outstanding business, bought batteries for my camera and notebooks small enough to fit in my purse. Last year we starved during the day at the festival—the cafeteria was jam-packed and the workshops are scheduled so close together there’s no time to wait in food lines if you don’t want to miss anything—so this year I bought beef jerky, nuts and dried fruit to share with whoever was with me. I had it all planned. It would be great fun, and I wouldn’t allow anything to spoil even a moment of it.

The week before the festival I developed what I first took to be allergies. By Thursday I realized it wasn’t allergies, but either a sinus infection or the flu. Thursday night I was so miserable I didn’t sleep at all, and as the sun rose on Friday I realized I would not be going to the festival. I called my friends and let them know. I looked up the confirmation number for the hotel reservations and emailed Diana. I also cried for a few minutes. But stuff happens, and I’m a big girl, so I got over the disappointment and set my sights on getting well.

And I did get better. By the time Sunday rolled around the worst of the snotty, sneezing, aching misery had passed and I knew I’d be completely well in a day or two.

But now I had a small pain in my lower back, just to the right of my tail bone. Had I perhaps sneezed too hard and pulled something? The pain wasn’t bad. I took some of the Motrin and flexural my rheumatologist prescribes for MCTD, and figured it would pass. My sinus infection got better but the pain in my back did not. I met with clients on Wednesday and one of them pointed out I was limping.

By Friday I knew something was seriously wrong. The small pain was not so small anymore, and it had spread like flaming napalm to my hip and down my right thigh. By 7pm Friday night I could find no position that didn’t hurt, and my right leg could not be bent without causing me excruciating pain. I could barely walk by this time, and I couldn’t sit, because that required bending my leg at the hip and knee, so it was a tense ride to the nearby urgent care clinic. We got there right before their 8 pm closing time. I stood leaning against a wall in the waiting room as the attending doctor saw to the last people who had been there before me. I was fighting back tears, and trembling with pain, but more importantly, I was beginning to feel frightened.

I am not a sissy when it comes to pain. I’ve given birth to two children, both of them large babies, and the first without benefit of pain meds. But this pain I was experiencing was so widespread, severe and inexplicable it actually frightened me. The doctor saw me. He suspected bursitis of the hip and gave me a scrip for pain meds, which my husband went and got filled, after taking me home and icing my hip and thigh as the doctor had recommended. I took the vicodin and waited for the pain to abate. But it never did.

By 5:30 am Saturday morning I was officially out of my mind. I was experiencing back-arching, claw-handed agony that nearly made speech impossible, and the pain meds the urgent care doctor had prescribed, even doubled, weren’t touching it. The large muscle in my right thigh jerked and jumped like it was electrically charged. My husband half carried me out to our truck and attempted to get me up into the passenger side. I was sobbing and frightened and in the most complete misery I have even experienced, outside childbirth. On a scale of 1 – 10 this pain was a 10, and I was completely freaked out by it.

Jim took me to the nearest emergency room, which happens to be located in a nearby retirement community. At the emergency room entrance I fell into the proffered  wheelchair. But since my hip and knee wouldn’t bend without exponentially increasing the pain all I could do was perch on the edge of the seat with my back arched and my head resting on the top of the seatback so I was staring straight up. I could not lift my right leg onto the foot rest, so whoever was pulling the chair wheeled me into the hospital backwards, with my right foot dragging, as my husband went to park our truck.

The wait in the emergency waiting room would have been humiliating…if I had cared what anyone thought of me. I was sweating profusely and my teeth chattered uncontrollably. My waist-length hair was wrapped everywhere around me and under me. I sat arched back in the chair, gripping the armrests with white knuckled intensity, hissing and sobbing with pain. I wore an old pair of black yoga pants and an old tee-shirt and flip-flops. I’m sure, in retrospect, I looked perfectly demented.

You would think a person in this condition would be brought right into the treatment area of an emergency room and cared for, but such is not the case. I was deposited in a public waiting room full of the disembodied voices of curious strangers while my husband had to fill out and sign a lot of papers. I don’t know how long I sat in that waiting room. It may have been an hour, it may have only been ten minutes, but every second ticked by like an hour. I recall hearing a woman nearby say, “Oh, my, that poor girl. She can go in front of me.” Next I heard the deeper rumble of an indignant man: “No. You’ve been waiting. When it’s your turn you go.”

“But I’m not that bad off,” said the female voice.

My husband returned and hovered over me, trying to comfort me. “Hang in there, babe. Just a little longer.” I heard him return to the admittance nurse’s window numerous times to ask how much longer I’d have to wait, and asking if they could at least get me out of the chair and onto a table, because sitting was not really possible and the position I was in was making the pain worse.

Eventually they called my name and someone grabbed the handles of the wheelchair and attempted to push it. The metal footrest jammed into the soft ligament at the back of my right ankle. “Mame, pick up your foot and put it on the footrest.” The demand penetrated the red haze surrounding me and I tried to respond. My leg wouldn’t move on its own and I couldn’t relax my grip on the arms of the chair or lean forward, both actions that would result in my hip bending. “Can you hear me?” Louder now. “I said pick up your foot.” The chair jerked impatiently. I think I said something like: “Uhhgrr.” I heard the low murmur of my husband’s voice. Then I felt hands lift my leg and place my foot on the footrest. The institutional acoustic tile ceiling above me whirled dizzily and I was wheeled off to the station where temps and blood pressure are checked.

I was so out of it that I remember very little of the next fifteen minutes or so. I was cuffed and questioned, and did my best to answer coherently. But I’m not sure I made much sense. I have no recollection of what anyone who spoke to me looked like, or what they asked me. I was wheeled into the treatment area of the emergency room and parked beside a bed, which my husband helped me up on to, all the while gently encouraging me. More questions were asked, and a short, middle aged Hispanic woman got an IV in my left arm.

“Where’s that noise coming from?” a male voice asked on the other side of a white canvas curtain. “It’s this one, in here,” another male voice replied. “I just ordered up morphine for her.”

My husband stood beside the bed I lay on, alternately stroking my hair back from my forehead and rubbing my spasming right thigh, while I worked on breaking the world record for saying ‘oh’.

The morphine took a long time to get to the emergency room. It seemed it needed to be brought in by camel, then unpacked and accounted for, before I could have it. Hard as it is to believe, morphine is apparently not kept in the very place where it is most needed.

The relief, when it finally arrived, hit my blood stream like mother’s love. The pain, which had grown to colossal size, shrank to a smoky throb in my lower back, hip and down my leg. My madly twitching thigh muscle slowed and my teeth ceased chattering. I felt my senses begin to return. It occurred to me I might be in some serious trouble. I could even be dying.

Over the course of that long Saturday I was again given morphine, and a little later something called dilaudid, when it became obvious the morphine wasn’t ‘holding’. The person assigned to me, a P.A. named Grace, ordered up tests and asked more questions.

Somewhere near the middle of the day I realized it was the Saturday of my writers workshop, and I was missing the second pleasure I had been looking forward to in March. My children came to see me, faces worried as they bent above me. My daughter brought me a birthday card, and I remembered it was St. Patrick’s Day…my birthday.

It was nearly 7pm by the time Grace had ruled out all the dire things she thought might be causing the problem. It wasn’t appendicitis, and it wasn’t anything to do with any of the other organs in my abdomen. Should I be admitted? Or should I go home? My only fear, at that point, was going home and having the pain return. The dilaudid was beginning to wear off and the pain was bearing its teeth at me in a wolfish grin, so Grace ordered up percoset to see if it would be sufficient to see me through until I could get to my GP on Monday.

Jim and I arrived home near sunset: me pale, hobbled and shaken; both of us ravenous after a long day without anything to eat other than some crackers the nurse had provided when she brought the Percocet. He brought me into the house and got me settled. There was a card on the front door from Diana, who had been worried and come looking for me when I hadn’t showed up at the workshop, which really touched me.

Jim went out front to retrieve my purse from the truck, and returned with his arms full of Tupperware. Our next door neighbor, Laura, had given him a corned beef supper, the traditional meal of St Patrick’s Day, complete with homemade Irish bread. This unexpected act of kindness completely shattered me. If I could have moved, I would have run next door and hugged her. It’s funny who the angels turn out to be, when something like this happens.

To be continued…

Awards Time!

Stacy Green over at Turning the Page has kindly nominated me for the 7×7 award. Thank you, Stacy. I’m honored. The rules are that the recipient must link back to seven posts in seven categories, and then must pass the award on to seven deserving recipients, so here goes:

Most Beautiful:Faith, Let Go and Know.

Most Helpful: Drafting vs Outlining. I wrote this in response to a member of my workshop who was doubting the writing process. I believe there are as many writing processes as there are writers, and there is no wrong way to write… except the way that produces no writing at all.

Most Popular:A Goodly Deal of Cursing combines humor with Medieval swearing, so no surprise that it was so popular!

Most Controversial: The Pit and the Pendulum. This one riled some folks up. The really angriest comments (those with swearing and threats) never made it to light. It is my blog, after all.

Most Surprisingly Successful: Full Moon Madness Maybe this one shouldn’t have surprised me, but I thought I was just writing a silly little bit of something. People really do love werewolves.

Most Underrated: Going Deeper My post about a moment of inspiration brought on by a quote from Pat Conroy.

Most Prideworthy: This one should probably also be The Pit and the Pendulum. I stuck by my beliefs in that one, and didn’t back down. I feel pretty good about that. But since that post is already filling the Controversial slot: She because I had fun bringing my muse to life and giving her a persona.

I’d like to pass this award on to these seven wonderful recipients:

1) Nina Badzin: Nina’s blog is always upbeat, straight-talking (I find myself nodding my head a lot when reading her posts) and she has some great posts on blogging and Twitter etiquette that are worth checking out.

2) Melissa Crytzer Fry: Melissa is a fellow Arizonian who uses her camera and her considerable writing skills to share her love of the desert.

3) Jolina Petersheim: Jolina will sometimes make you cry, but mostly she’ll make you laugh.

4) Leah Singer: Leah’s beautiful blog is a blend of the good things in life; cooking, family, crafts, and books.

5) Julia Munroe Martin: Wordsxo is all about Maine, and writing, and like my blog, just whatever Julia feels like writing about on any given morning.

6) Erika Marks: the same writing that makes her posts so fun is just what you get to enjoy in her first published novel, Little Gale Gumbo.

7) Natalia Sylvester: Natalia is a freelance author with a sweet writing style and unique view on the world who posts about writing and life, and the writing life.

Why Do You Write?

A woman in my writers workshop shared this joke with all the rest of us via email. I don’t know where she got it, so I can’t attribute it, but here it is:

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.

She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

“Oh my,” said the writer. “Let me see heaven now.”

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.

“Wait a minute,” said the writer. “This is just as bad as hell!”

“Oh no, it’s not,” replied an unseen voice. “Here, your work gets published.”

A flurry of emails followed with one writer wondering:

Do you suppose purgatory is any better?

To which the wit that had sent the joke quipped:

Probably in purgatory you’re waiting for an agent to respond.

Writers all have different attitudes and ideas about why they write. Some claim to actually dislike it. Others, and I’m among them, say we aren’t happy unless we are living a writing life.

But pretty much every writer asks themselves at some point: Why write?

I write because I have these stories inside me. And I know that I am their only way out into the world; their conduit. I dream about my characters, and they pester me, until I write them down. If I don’t sit down and write them, they just keep swirling in my head. (I get an image here, of my head as a toilet bowl…shrieking, struggling characters swirling and swirling around in torrents of water…but I am reluctant to write it. I don’t like the idea of my head as a toilet. But there it is…and now I have written it.)

As much as I desire to obtain an agent and get traditionally published, it’s not the reason I write, really. I’d say it’s the reason I polish, and sweat, and work at perfecting some of what I write. (Check out my friend Natalia’s blog post about showing first drafts to others…it’s excellent. She’s so brave!) But initially I write to get the story out and into the physical, tangible world, where I can see it, and begin to grasp what it is. (To flush my toilet bowl head perhaps? Okay…enough with the toilet bowl thing…I don’t like where this is going!)

I write because I love language. More specifically, I love the English language. I love reading beautiful language, which can be about ugly things sometimes, but if it is written in such a way that it moves us, then regardless of the topic it can be beautiful. And I want to do that.

I write for the thrill of crafting beautiful passages. If you’re an avid reader, then you know what I mean. You come across some passages in books that make your pulse speed up and that you have to read again, and again, because they are so evocative and lovely, and just…well…sublime. (You read them to your writer pals, because you know another writer will understand.) I was at breakfast with a couple of writer friends the other day and one of them spoke of how these passages can come out during a moment when we are tapped in to the source of the story. The perfect words can flow onto the page during these magical, connected moments.

And then we look at what we’ve written and think…did I write that?

Is there any greater thrill? Any greater satisfaction?

The other reason I write is because I am a miserable, crotchety wench if I don’t write. (My family will verify this, if anyone doubts it.) I gave up writing once, for about 10 years, telling myself I needed to make money and focus on my family. But that experiment is a post for another day.

Writers: Why do you write?

Drafting vs. Outlining

The debate can get quite heated on this topic. We’ve all read the various posts, articles and books touting one method above the other.  Some folks say they must have everything down on cards or a ‘beat sheet’ before starting their novels. Others just seem to write their first draft without doing any of that.

I recently got to thinking about these two, seemingly opposing views, because a writer in my workshop was having trouble with her first novel. This woman is a talented writer, and a quick study. So I wondered what was going on when she missed a few meetings. An email exchange revealed the problem:

A “writing teacher” had told her she couldn’t write anything further until she had a complete outline to work from. That she had to have her plot twists and characters—all figured out ahead of time. And she shouldn’t write another word forward until then.

This proclamation had gotten the writer all jammed up and critical of herself—because she couldn’t ‘think’ of an outline, and had therefore deemed herself a failure. She despaired she could ever write anything to completion, and was now experiencing a mental block to her own creativity.

I have to say here…my first reaction, once my hair laid back down on my scalp, was extreme annoyance with said “writing teacher”. I had an almost irresistible urge to paddle the teacher and send her down to the principle. So the first thing I did was wait for that to pass. (Nothing good ever comes from violence!)

Then I wrote to the writer, and this is what I told her:

What some people call outlines are what other people call first drafts.

It’s as simple as that. You can write your first draft on cards, or in notebooks, or on your computer in files labeled as chapters. Whatever you choose to label it, if it’s words, written in a sequence, using the letters of the alphabet, naming characters and what they are doing, it’s a first draft. And you can’t get to it without sitting down and filling white space with words.

What we choose to call it is just semantics.

The method we choose is just preference.

It really all boils down to how different people create, well…differently. Some are sprawling, like me. I write big, loose, wild first drafts without any outline. I have some scenes, some of the characters, and I kinda know what the story is about—a premise. The entire first draft is where I find out exactly what the novel or short story is about, who all the characters are, what they sound like, and what parts they will all play. I cannot create any other way. I sit and write. Wildly. Fast. 1500 or more words in two or three hours, every morning. During the rest of the day, when I am doing my day job, or washing my hair, or the dishes, or reading…that’s when I am thinking about what I wrote that morning, and what it means, and what I might write next. (I keep notebooks handy and jot down ideas and cryptic words, sentences and images to help guide me the next day.)

A more ‘traditional’ outline simply doesn’t work for me. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this and I think I know why. It’s because writing that type of outline requires the use of my left brain. And all the really good stuff, the creative stuff, comes from my right brain. That’s where my muse lives, and she doesn’t come out to play when I am being too analytical.

The rational side of me likes the idea of file cards and beat sheets. It seems so deliciously orderly. It’s like folding laundry or plotting the fastest route for a road trip. So very organized and rational. Unfortunately it’s also completely stifling, creatively…for me. Everything I’ve ever written from this kind of left brain activity was utterly boring. If I resisted the urge to deviate from the outline as I wrote, (to pop out of my left brain and into my right) what I ended up with had none of the power, inventiveness or surprise of the work written ‘by the seat of my pants’.

Do you remember ever doing a paint by number painting when you were little? They’re fun. You get to fill in numbered spaces with numbered colors, until gradually a picture emerges. Unfortunately it’s not a picture you want to look at for very long. You definitely don’t want to frame it and hang it on your wall. They usually end up in the trash…which is where they belong. That’s what ‘writing from an outline’ does for me. I end up with a finished story, that I don’t want to read.

If you listen to folks who study the brain and how it works, you quickly pick up that all the most creative stuff we do: inventions and works of art—even Einstein’s flights of mathematical insight—comes from the right brain. So it stands to reason that however we choose to create anything must be the way which stimulates this side of the brain for the individual. If postlets or file cards do it for you, so be it. Call yourself an outliner and go for it, my friend.

But please don’t insist this is the only legitimate way to do it. That it is superior in any way (it’s not). This is just one way. It’s the thing that stimulates you creatively. And we are all wired different.

An outline is a first draft is an outline.

 Oh, and the writer from the workshop? She’s back to doing some writing. She’s still dealing with her inner critic…which grew bloated and strong on what she’d been ‘taught’. She is working on getting over the idea that the published novels she reads were somehow shat out by people, complete and polished. But knowing she doesn’t have to show her work to anybody else has helped, and I know if she sticks with it…if she just fills white space with uncensored thought, she will get there.

“It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.   

E.L. Doctorow

 “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. Perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force.”  

 Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

Patricia Highsmith is one of my favorite authors. She wrote her tightly plotted suspense novels using notebooks and a typewriter, and writing many drafts. I suspect she fell somewhere between a plotter and an organic writer.

Writers, how do you create best? Are you an ‘organic’ type of writer? Or are you a ‘plotter’? Do you fall somewhere in between?

The Pit and the Pendulum

of Self Publishing

Vincent contemplates doing something drastic after reading an unedited novel.

A while back I announced I would be reviewing books for my blog. I’ve met many wonderful writers via Twitter and my blog and received a nice little pile of books to review. A delight to someone like me, who loves to read a good book.

Most of these little tomes are self-published. I was a bit leery about that, but also excited, because I love helping others. And a good book review can do a lot for an author’s sales. However, in the course of reading these self-published books two realizations dawned on me:

Most of them are first drafts.

And none of them are professionally edited.

This came as a shock to me. Because each of these books have their own websites. And the authors attached to them are, without exception, nice people who are writers. They have blogs and are active on Twitter and Facebook as writers. So as I flipped through these books I wondered, do these folks read? And if so, do they not see that their ‘novel’ is not:

1. formatted like those they read

2. as long as those they read (in most cases)

3. as polished as those they read

Because one’s experience as a reader would inform one of these things. Wouldn’t it? Or are we blind when it comes to our own work? And if we are blind, then wouldn’t this be all the more reason to have our work edited by someone else? Preferably a professional?

I’m a little saddened to find this is the state of affairs. In the course of belonging to the writers groups I do I have had opportunity to read a few novels that were either destined to be self-published (their authors said) or were in fact, already self-published. And I always found them disappointingly amateurish and terrible. The results of the high and unrestrained excitement of a month of NaNoWriMo, or some such. But, these were all from authors with no internet presence; people who were isolated in their writing, or who had perhaps never written anything prior and had no training in it.

So I didn’t expect to encounter quite the same from these internet savvy folks who have so much more ‘going on’ for them as writers.

I won’t be doing reviews of these books, and I now have gotten myself into the unfortunate position of having to tell these writers why. Sure to be a morning of uncomfortable email writing, especially since I like the writers as people. But I won’t say a book is good if it is not for whatever reason. I cannot recommend a book that was a trial for me to plow through. And it is upsetting to me to have to dash anyone’s feelings.

Here are the main issues I found with these self-published novels. This first category concerns formatting:

1. No indents. (Really? You didn’t know you were supposed to indent at paragraphs?)
2. Not properly setting dialogue apart, where it should be, and/or indenting it.
3. Double spacing at the end of every sentence. (I have seen this on manuscripts over the years. The writers always insist it’s proper. It’s not. It’s an old fashioned typing habit. And it looks really odd in a printed book.)
4. Sometimes using quotations for dialogue, sometimes not. Sometimes using single quotations (within the same body of work) instead of double quotations—for no apparent reason.
5. Whole pages without a single break or indent, sometimes with dialogue buried in it.
6. Sometimes italicizing thoughts and sometimes not.

Ignoring these basic rules of English grammar makes the reading very difficult for the reader. Is that what you want the reader to experience when reading your book? Difficulty and distraction?

These next issues concern points in the actual writing that a good edit would have pointed out to the writer:

1. Using the same word many times within a paragraph.
2. Using too many adverbs or adjectives. (Which weakens our writing)
3. Using the same adverb or adjective repeatedly on the same page.
4. Excessive wordiness
5. Unedited dialogue which would read so much better if tightened up.
6. Rife with clichés.
7. Punctuation missing or improperly used.
8. Words misspelled.
9. Words missing.
10. Typos.
11. Undeveloped plot points which could/would have been developed in subsequent rewrites and would have made the plot more interesting and complex and surprising.
12. Under-developed or flat characters. (Again, this could be remedied by rewrites.)
13. No sensory description whatsoever. Sight? Sounds? Smells?
14. An imbalance between exposition, summary, action and dialogue.
15. Word count too low to be considered a novel. (Is 45,000 words  now a novel? When did that happen?)

People, don’t let the rush to say you’ve published a novel make you publish something less polished, professional and complete than the novels published by traditional publishers. Right now the pendulum is swinging toward self-publishing. But experience has taught that trends always swing back and reach some point of equilibrium. Where that will be nobody knows. One thing I know for certain: I do not want to see the high standard of literature turned into something shoddy. Please keep our body of literature up to a standard we can all be proud of and enjoy. If you have the time and money to hire someone knowledgeable to build a website for your self-published novel, why not spend the same time and money on getting it properly written, edited and formatted?

If you don’t, I will venture to say, you will never be taken seriously. And your novel will not become a classic that outlives you and is read and loved by many.

And isn’t that the goal?

(I will still be reviewing novels for self published writers and traditionally published writers alike. The only change in my review policy is that I will request a first chapter from any self published writer prior to agreeing to read the entire novel.)

A great link to basics of manuscript formatting: here.