I was speaking to a friend on the phone today and the subject of her writing came up. I asked her what she was doing about getting published and she replied that she wasn’t quite ready. She may not be. I did caution her to make sure that she doesn’t have the syndrome that many authors get.

What’s the name of the syndrome?  Fail (Fearful Author in Limbo) Syndrome occurs when:

Writers write but never publish. They attend their weekly writing group sessions and get feedback about their writing (some of it good) and still leave there feeling not good enough.

The idea of being a writer is appealing but the discipline required to write takes too much effort.

Everyone that they know tells them what a great writer they are. But, all they hear is their grade four teacher telling them they have no imagination.

They don’t believe that anyone else will be interested in what they write.

How do you cure Fail Syndrome? Write, submit, learn to handle rejection and continue to repeat these steps until someone takes you seriously as a writer.

We believe in you!

I just finished a publishing job. The book came to us ready to be formatted according to the author. We were paid to format the book and publish it to several different sites.  He assured us that the editing was done and that he would not require our editing service.

I was appalled at the grammatical errors. We spoke again about editing services. He indicated that  several of his friends had already looked at the book and it was fine.

I did my job and corrected some of the more glaring mistakes. Finally, the book was ready. The cover graphics were done, the formatting was done, the only job left to do was submission. He decided, after it was formatted, to hire someone to edit it.

The problem with this scenario is that when the editor gets done with making the necessary changes it will have to be re-formatted.

He will pay twice what he needs to for formatting.

This situation could easily have been prevented if he chose to pay a professional to edit his book before submission. Poor editing may result in his book not making Premier Status on some sites. How unfortunate!

I can’t stress enough, edit, edit, edit and when you’re done get a professional to look at it!

Keep writing.