Lessons Learned

I finally received the proof copy of "Second Chance" a couple of weeks ago. I was told this was my final opportunity to read through the novel and correct any layout or punctuation errors. I confidently and excitedly sat down to read through it, feeling certain I wouldn't find many.

Let's just say my ego has taken quite a bruising. Most of the errors I found questioned comma usage. But I had everything from missing words to backwards quotation marks. If I had a nickel for every time I asked myself, "how did I miss this?"....

I read through the book twice, listed all the possible errors, and mailed it back to the publisher today, anxious that I might have missed even more mistakes.

Being a compulsive problem solver, I have already thought of a couple of things I will do differently before signing that "content approval form" on the next novel:

1. I'm going to print out the entire book. It's amazing how different it looks on paper.
2. Before I print out the book, I'm going to change the font, so that it will have an even different appearance, because let's face it, once you've read something 15 time, you tend to gloss over parts that you "know by heart".
3. I will read it through once looking for "content" and once more looking strictly for punctuation type errors.
4. I'm going to purchase a book on grammar and punctuation usage, so I will have a reference when those annoying questions pop up such as, "should this be a comma or semi-colon".

Hopefully this will help solve at least some of the issues! Stay tuned for the release date of "Second Chance"! It should be out before Christmas.