If youve never written a book, then you probably do not know about the absolutely hair-raising, hair pulling, hair losing, event of meeting a deadline. It is somewhat like article or column writing. Except, when you write a book, you agonize to the point of losing sleep, losing your appetite, losing all desire for carnal pleasures, over the simple question,

Are there any errors in the manuscript? {1}

When you write a column or article, and if it is a paying gig, the editor is going to read it and question you up one side and down the other about,

Wheres the quote for this?

How do you know such and such?

I want you rewrite paragraph #10 and make it tighter.

(I wish I had never heard the phrase tight writing.)

Now, book editors will do this too. And, when push come to shove, with you and the editor going over what youve written with a fine-toothed comb, you hope for the best when press time comes. If you end up with some typo, grammatical boo-boo, misspelled word, or inaccuracy in some fact, then both you and the editor can throw you hands up in the air and say,

We tried.

And, I might just add right here and now, errors do happen. Even when there are lots and lots of sets of eyeballs looking at a manuscript, errors are going to creep in. Have you seen a Danielle Steel novel lately?

What terrifies me the most isREADERS!

I once read something by the famous travel editor, Bill Bryson, who said something to the effect that if you forget to dot an i or cross a t, readers will most certainly take the time out of their busy and meaningful lives to drop you a multi-paged letter to tell you about it.

And, he is right!

In the first book I coauthored with my wife, there were boo-boos. I have spent many sleepless night worrying that perhaps we should apply for passage on the next space shuttle and ask them to drop us off on the nearest inhabitable planet. The reason for my worry is that readers, of course, have gone to great lengths to point out these errors in the public forum on Amazon.com.

Thank you very much!

In our first book, The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico, we wrote with the intent of offering something different than the usual expatriation books. The books that do exist on expatriating to Mexico are good. I have actually enjoyed reading all of them, and Ive read some more than once. But, we wanted to write this book with a different slant. Why write something that was the same old stuff rehashed?

In case you do not know this, once youve submitted a manuscript, the editor is supposed to go over it with his editorial magic wand and find the mistakes. Then, you get the galley proofs back and you, the author, review it again for errors. Well, we found the errors in the manuscript, made a doc file, and sent it to the editor.

Lo and behold, the book came off the press with the errors still in it. Now, I have eventually gotten over this since it will be rectified in the next edition. We will revise. The errors do not distract from the text and you can read the book in spite of the mistakes.

The ones not so forgiving are the readers.

I have tried to understand this. I really have. And, all Ive been able to come up is a feeling of sheer terror! Maybe I need to talk to someone.

As an author, I want to produce the best work humanly possible. I do understand the reader might feel slighted if the book isnt also PERFECTLY edited. I can see if an entire paragraph is missing or duplicated (my wife showed me a novel she has where this really happened), making it hard to read the chapter, then I get that.

In our book, two lines jumped within a paragraph and the word college came out collage. Now, remember, we caught these errors. They were not fixed.

Rather than putting away my pen, we have coauthored another book, GUANAJUATO, MXICO: Your Expat, Study Abroad, and Vacation Survival Manual in the Land of Frogs. This is due for release this summer.

And, I am here to tell you I have been sweating blood over this book! What if theres a misspelled word? What if there is some hideously monstrous mistake somewhere? I cannot sleep for worrying over this! (Did I say I might want to talk to someone?)

My wife, the copyeditor in this family, has labored to the point of exhaustion over this new book. Not only has she edited this new one but also has written two chapters in it and has done some rewriting.

Can a book be perfect? Can even one of the huge publishing houses make a mistake? Can the big-name authors, published by the hotshot houses in New York, miss a period, misplace a semicolon, miss some grammar mistakes, produce something unworthy of the readers time?

Did I ask you if youve read a Danielle Steel novel lately?{2}

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{1}I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money to read. It doesn't have to be very good, necessarily, but somebody, somewhere, has got to be willing to pay money for it. --Bill Bryson

{2}Dont misunderstand me. I should hope and pray to be as successful as Danielle Steel. What I mean is her fans comments on her book, Toxic Bachelors, as they appear on Amazon.com. But, I am sure Ms. Steel is crying all the way to the bankyou go, girl!

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THE PLAIN TRUTH ABOUT LIVING IN MEXICO

Expatriates Doug and Cindi Bower have successfully expatriated to Mexico, learning through trial and error how to do it from the conception of the initial idea to driving up to their new home in another country. Now the potential expatriate can benefit from their more than three years of pre-expat research to their more than three years of actually living in Mexico.

http://www.zyworld.com/theolog/PlainTruth/Home.htm