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Topic #427
How do you turn off your internal editor when you are reading for enjoyment?
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The inner dialogue running while I am reading is constant, never silent. It doesn’t matter if it is official documents for work, emails, texts, social media posts, or juicy new book. That editor is ready to go regardless of my need to quiet them. I cannot turn them off. In fact, it’s a good thing for me not to turn them off.
Why allow this inner dialogue to run, which can be distracting to the reading? I know I need it silent when reading, but letting my editor brain work exercises those synapses. I get better at writing by observing bad writing and good writing, equipped by years of experience to do so. Knowing the difference is important and not learned by just reading or writing excessively. This is why I am so annoyed with traditional publishing companies who put out books riddled with mistakes, as they’re always doing. People will accept what they put out as good writing without question. They will take any independent author to task for a single typo, though. Infuriating.
A traditionally published book should be clean. There should not be any mistakes in them. In this age, with all of the technology, and ability to change copy on a whim, how do the mistakes continue to make their way through to print (i’ve seen them even in classics)? Don’t their overpaid editors actually edit? Isn’t there a proofing level they go through a few times, too? Doesn’t a copy that comes to them for consideration have to be edited prior to submission? Yes. All of this. There is no excuse.
That is essentially why my inner editor is not silent. The umbrage.
I have no patience for an industry that claims to be the outlet of all good writing. Independent authors do their due diligence to better outcomes, but are still called wannabes. Sure, there are still those who cannot escape their ego and put out poorly written work, but this is also very true in traditional spheres. I once read that certain authors do not even receive an edit after a time, because publishers cannot waste time getting to the profits. I’d be mortified as an author. The author I’m thinking of was hugely popular in the 1980s and 1990s and their book quality declined heavily once they were no longer edited. The readers took note, but the traditional publisher behind them continued pumping them out.
Why does this all bother me so much? Fledgling authors are told to read all of the popular books, and as many books in general as they can, to ingrain good writing. Somehow we learn our skill by osmosis. That’s not true, because if you cannot discern between the faulty stuff and the solid stuff, how do you know? You’re just incorporating what is hot at that time. If you want to write the hottest new thing, you’re going to have manage the seemingly psychic ability of reading where tastes are headed. You will get this wrong more often than right. Not to mention that you care more about the hot new thing than the art.
If you’re following trends, your writing still needs to rank high. You can’t learn that just reading or writing for set amounts of time per day. Unpacking what makes bad and good writing is far more necessary. Getting into the grammar dos and don’ts is tedious. If you’re serious, you’ll suck it up. Paying attention to what readers are making fun of is also part of the deal. Would you want to find yourself on the list of authors who wrote a ridiculous line?
While reading, I also tend to rephrase sentences. My brain goes on tangents: how could this paragraph be better? There is the occasional: I wouldn’t have used that word. That’s actually interesting for me, but it makes reading a lot more time consuming. Yes, I do this while watching a film, too.
Nope. I can’t shut off the editor in my head. Binding and gagging that part of my brain doesn’t work. The editor is just never silent. Click on the other author’s responses below to see how they handle this writer conundrum. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter and have this hop delivered every friday to your email. See you next time!
Even computerized grammar checkers make errors. I love it when software says one thing on a first pass, and something different on a second pass.
Yeah! That is very frustrating.
That inner critical voice is important to hone, but I do like to be able to fully immerse and just enjoy sometimes, too. I’m with you about the unfairness of how indie writers are judged for small mistakes that are never even mentioned in “big 5” published books. @samanthabwriter from
Balancing Act
Given the state of some traditionally published books I’ve recently read, I’m sick of being told that, as a self-published author, my work is most likely unedited and therefore full of errors. If you find a typo in one of mine, I can have a corrected version uploaded in half an hour.
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