Details, Details, Details

DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS I was going to talk about villain motivation right now, and though I expressed some hesitation about that on Twitter this morning after yesterday’s occasions in Ohio, I still will try thisâ€"probably next week. But then something happened this morning that received me thinking about the sometimes crucial importance of what might at first appear to be the tiniest of details. I’ve been knowledgeable editor for a very very long time, and have copy edited and proofread extra manuscripts than I can countâ€"I really truthfully misplaced depend years in the past. In no other a part of a guide’s “product cycle” is an eye fixed for element extra essential than in these crucial quality control steps. I even have a fairly good eye for detail, and if I’ve misplaced depend of what number of books I’ve edited, I can solely think about the number of little tiny errorsâ€"some that the vast majority of readers wouldn’t even have recognizedâ€"that I’ve mounted. I do, however, keep in mind a few that I failed to repair. Yes, loyal readers, there have been occasions when that eye for element failed me, and in flip, failed my authors. What made me consider this at present? Am I just having some kind of disaster of confidence? No . . . I mean, yes. Kind of. On Thursday I transferred some money from one account to a different to cowl some payments which might be due earlier than the primary of March. It’s no huge deal, actually, the type of factor folks do everyday, and definitely not the first time I’ve accomplished it. Everything should have been nice, the money should have been in my checking account on Friday, however then it wasn’t. Then I noticed that the transaction would possibly take up to three business days. Nail biter weekend then Mondayâ€"no cash. Of course, I thought, depart it to a few banks to conspire to cause me stress by waiting for the absolute final second, which was today, the third enterprise day. But then no cash. Then I checked the acc ount I was transferring from and the money was back in there. I’ll save you the outline of panic . . . wild, uncontrolled gnashing of enamel, pulling out of my few remaining hairs, curses and protestations fired off into the universe, phone calls to financial institution customer service reps in which I begged, extolled, debased myself . . . When I set up the transfer from Bank A to Bank B I gave Bank A the routing quantity and account number for my checking account at Bank B, apparently not having seen the little pull down menu above those fields that identified it as a financial savings account. Bank A sends out to Bank B on the lookout for a savings account with these numbers. No such financial savings account exists. Bank B’s auto-response: No idea, Bank A, hold the money. All this involves my attention only this morning. I’m actually nonetheless in the process of attempting to get both banks to bend some rules to get this switch out of Bank A right now and into Bank B tom orrow, thereby narrowly avoiding minor disasters brought on by Thursday being the start of a brand new month, and I remain guardedly optimistic that every one shall be fantastic tomorrow. But right here I am, scurrying around in a state of panic over what? A small element that I just plain didn’t see. Kind of just like the teaser paragraph within the first book I edited for TSR, method back in 1995, in which this line appears: “Taste cold steal!” Waagh! The bit with Jeggred staying behind to look at over the our bodies of the opposite darkish elves while they Astral travel in search of Lolth but then there he's all of a sudden in the Astral with them in Richard Baker’s Condemnation. Oops! Just just lately I was made conscious of my complete lack of research into Spanish naming conventions as a result of I went with what I thought sounded good as a substitute of doing the slightest bit of research on the matter. Sorry! The reality is you'll be able to go over and over and ove r and over a manuscript dozens, tons of, 1000's of occasions and a few little factor will get via, some little typo or misspelling or mistake in utilizationâ€"and not only simply because, like my Checking/Savings pull-down menu, you simply didn’t see it, however because like my Spanish naming convention gaff, you simply didn’t know, or didn’t work exhausting enough. No excuses. Except that that is going to occur. We are all human, even editors, and people make mistakes. Sometimes they’re small mistakes, sometimes they’re big errors, but as I’ve often had to remind an editor, squirming over the typo that made it by way of, no one was killed as a result of that Dragonlance e-book had the word chapter spelled chaptes in a chapter headingâ€"holy crap, actually? Yeah, we did. No one, not me nor my editor, had been sent to the gallows as a result of our chapter numbers went off observe in one of many Watercourse Trilogy booksâ€"see, now I can’t even keep in mind which one. I will not go bankrupt, be foreclosed on, despatched to debtor’s prison, or sacrificed on the road in front of that hideous bull statue on Wall Street because of this financial institution switch snafu. But when I miss these particulars it does piss me off, knock me down a peg, and make me wish to do better subsequent time. When that mistake, that little detail will get past you, go ahead and squirm. If you don’t care enough to really feel embarrassedâ€"a minimum ofâ€"by one thing like that, you shouldn’t be writing or modifying. But if I let myself be defeated by “Taste chilly steal!” in 1995, there’s one career’s full of mistakes you will by no means know about, that were mounted earlier than anybody but the author and I had read that manuscript, that might have been missed by another person, and I would be making little detail mistakes and not caring, in a job I didn’t love practically as a lot as the one I actually have. Better to be sacrificed to the Bull God of Wall Street. â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans I know precisely what you mean re typos, and so forth. A reviewer who otherwise gave me a nice, thoughtful evaluation hit me with three stars out of 5 b/c he discovered some typos and some grammar errors in one of my novels. My first response was, in fact, no way I made these errors! Turns out I had. I mounted them instantly and rolled out a new version, however rattling did I feel silly for a while after that. Oh, I also had the identical downside with cash not displaying up after I expected it to. Hope your situation there works out better than it did for me! I hate discovering those typos after it’s too late. Pride, I guess. And February have to be the month for monetary mishaps. I swear I paid a bank card invoice online earlier than the due date. I even wrote it within the checkbook which I by no means do before I full the online transaction. So, why did I get a past due discover? Commence with the yelling and gnashing of teeth, but I received it labored out and the extra charg es dropped. (Note: incomplete sentence constructions used for effect. Just saying!) Fill in your details beneath or click an icon to log in: You are commenting utilizing your WordPress.com account. (Log Out/ Change) You are commenting utilizing your Google account. 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