All my life, I have been fighting dyslexia. I have lived under its shadow, and l let it control my life for far too long. The fear is understandable. Though I am fully capable of creating worlds and developing stories, what I have written can be very hard to understand without someone editing my work. My brain loves to twist words and create nonsensical sentences leaving my first, second, and what feels like my tenth draft needing to be decoded by the reader. I wish I could write down everything and push it through as fast as some other authors. But that’s not the case. I know my reality is not the same as others.
When I finished Ravenmaster, I was excited. I had spent years rewriting, decoding, and polishing up my story. I had more than a few people beta read it, and still, things slipped past my readers and my editor and made it into publication. I should have done what I tell my students to do. READ YOUR WORK OUT LOUD! I know better, but I was too excited to get my story out and into people’s hands. This has now made my greatest fear come true. People are reading my mistakes. I am that self-published author with errors.
I don’t know why it never occurred to me to try out Grammarly. Probably because I felt with enough human eyes on my work, they would be able to catch it all. I mean, we are the pokemon generation, after all. But that was not the case. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw things that were missed. They were minor but downright embarrassing. I bet those who purchased the book we’re annoyed. I was annoyed for them.
I am currently working through the last errors sprinkled throughout my book and plan on resubmitting everything by the weekend. I wish it was easy to agree with everything the machine tells me is wrong, but it doesn’t work that way. I have to double-check that it isn’t’ changing my voice or recreating my characters. But at least I will be able to be proud of my work again.
It may seem crazy that I haven’t pulled my book. I don’t plan on it. I’m still proud of myself for getting over every single fear that I had when it came to publishing it. I was scared that people wouldn’t like my story, and thankfully that isn’t the case. I’ve had many readers reach out asking when the second one will be released. Now, if only they would leave a review on whatever platform they purchased it on… and life would be perfect. My errors live in the 1st edition of Ravenmaster. I’m going to hide from it. I will learn from my mistakes and grow. That’s all I can do.
Until then, happy reading, everyone 🙂
