If at First You Don’t Succeed…

I’m on my two hundred and twenty-sixth try. I’ve heard its the charm.

I have gotten a lot of great feedback from the many readers who read my Advance Review Copy of Flirtation on the Hudson.

The feedback has all been positive, and I am ecstatic.

Surrounded by that good feeling, I have listened to the main criticisms offered by my readers. As a result, I am in the midst of one final edit. Even reviewers and readers who enjoyed my 1800s English, and phonetically written accented speech have told me that reading it slowed them down. I can’t have cumbersome dialogue!

I don’t want to alienate any of my readers! I want the book to be stimulating — not a chore to read.

So I sat down again, chained my self to my lap top and switched on the TRACK CHANGES. I am honing my words, scouting out repetitiveness and redundancies. I am making it more readable.

Bear with me faithful readers!

For those of you who purchased a copy of the first rendition, who slogged through the dialogue, contact me and I will send you a complimentary copy of the re-edited book.

Whew! This was hard to confess. I mean – you don’t hear any good authors taking back their work and saying “oops!” But I decided to “come clean” and make a public announcement for a few reasons:

I want to be a good writer. I know it is a process — the more you write, the better you get. It is the premises of the Outlier book. There is no way around putting in the 10,000 hours if you want to master a skill.
Re-reading the first version is embarrassing. I can express this more clearly, I think. This word is not exactly my intent. You readers would laugh if you saw how long it takes some times to choose exactly the right word! Sure, as my editor often tells me, editing can be endless.Perhaps its true -every author thinks their book could be written just a bit better. At some point the writer has to move on. I have 65 more pages in the rewrite to go. Then I will move on. I promise.
This process is the embodiment of our IndexCardCure philosophy. I know that right now this blogsite has a bit of a disparate image between the wonderful, well-written philosophical posts of Joan Grey my co-blogger and my ‘shameless commerce’ posts, hawking my endeavors. But behind my posts, in fact driving them, is the world view that progress is made one step at a time, and greatness is reached in tiny, unobserved increments.