Reading, writing, and editing...

Since Stacey and I have been revamping AoE and neck deep in the editing process, I’ve found myself more focused on the formats and writing techniques of other writers than I have been in the past. I’m not going to name specific books or authors, but there have been a lot of Ahha! Moments to be had recently. The first thing I’ve noticed is that some of the books written by authors on my favorite list are really, really simple. While the descriptions are present, they’re not over the top, they aren’t embellished with unnecessary words, and they’re really straight forward and to the point with just enough description to give readers just enough information to create their own pictures in their head.

Another observation I made came when I started to read the latest release of one of my favorite authors. Now, I’m not sure if her writing has always been this way or if my view of reading has just changed, but with this particular book I am seriously disappointed in the quality of the writing. It feels like either she didn’t edit it correctly herself or her editor is seriously slacking on the job. The dialogue is choppy, the descriptions are mediocre at best, and I find some of the characters (who I used to adore without question) annoying as hell. I think I’ve been so critical of Stacey’s and my writing lately that it’s started to transfer to my views on the books I read, which can be a good thing in some instances, but kind of a drag when I really just want to be swept away by a story and not distracted by the numerous mistakes between pages.

I know this is a pretty random blog topic, but for some reason it’s been on my mind a lot lately. Strange thing is, I’m really not a big fan of editing, but now that I’ve started I can’t seem to stop. It’s really starting to affect the entertainment value of the books I read. I’m afraid by the end out our current editing on AoE I’m going to need some kind of 12 step program to get some control back lol.

Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting observation. We’ll see how far it goes. In the mean time, we’re almost to the halfway mark on editing AoE and there shall be querying in our future. Good times!