Grammar

I have to say that correct grammar does not come naturally to me. Through experience (getting slated for grammatical errors when posting early work to online communities) and good friends who pointed (and continue to point) me in the right direction, I can now produce cleaner work. As I have been guilty for most common errors, perhaps that is why I seem to notice errors so much more lately.

I am a member of a writing community on facebook, and when I saw a link for a free e-book I thought I would give it a go and then review the story on Amazon for the author. The story had so many grammatical errors that even I found it almost completely unreadable. If the plot had been stronger, or the characters more likeable I would, most likely, have been able to blank out the poor grammar, but unfortunately that was not the case.

I embrace the fact that people self-publish now, but this book is one which really should not have been made public in its current state. It is just terrible and could be held as proof that people should never self-pub! 

I haven't left a review as I honestly couldn't have said anything nice about it, and thought constructive criticism should not be given publicly. I messaged the author to politely offer concrit if she was interested and to date I have had no response which perhaps wasn't surprising. What is a surprise though, is that the author obviously doesn't want to improve.

I squirm at my early mistakes, and berate myself over current ones, but I strive to improve and hopefully the editors at Dreamspinner Press don't wince too much when they open my manuscripts!

It is a strange person indeed who seems happy to continue to make the same mistakes!