new author blues

A little frustrating.. I published my first story (Discovering Sarah) recently. It ran about 9 pages, broken into 2 parts. I did edit the story a couple of times, but as is common, the eye and the brain are sometimes not in sync. There were several typo's, missing prepositions and auto correct calamities.
All in all I got a lot of great feedback for the story, but the grammar police were ruthless.
Here is what frustrates me.. I reached out to 3 different volunteer editors. not one replied to my request for review. So I did the best I could and published.

Why volunteer to edit, and then not respond? Even a polite refusal would have been welcomed!

Eros_Diem said:

A little frustrating.. I published my first story (Discovering Sarah) recently. It ran about 9 pages, broken into 2 parts. I did edit the story a couple of times, but as is common, the eye and the brain are sometimes not in sync. There were several typo's, missing prepositions and auto correct calamities.
All in all I got a lot of great feedback for the story, but the grammar police were ruthless.
Here is what frustrates me.. I reached out to 3 different volunteer editors. not one replied to my request for review. So I did the best I could and published.

Why volunteer to edit, and then not respond? Even a polite refusal would have been welcomed!

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Depends on the editor. When I started submitting stories, most of them were swamped. On a site as big as this one, I imagine editors get dozens of requests so you may not have been the only one reaching out to those three editors. Rushing to post a story is exciting, but the difference between a good story and a great story hinges on imagination and patience.

Now, I could wait for one to edit my work, but I feel more of a connection to my story doing my own editing. Over time and investing some of it into researching things I should’ve paid more attention to in high school, I have become a much better writer. You’ll appreciate your work more if you do a majority of the editing yourself, trust meKant

Plus, the "volunteer editors" section on the story side of Lit does not work. You're best to go to the Editor's Forum to find help.

For a time, at least, Google treated any mail from Lit as spam. Other mailhandlers may be doing the same.

Lindsay_O said:

Plus, the "volunteer editors" section on the story side of Lit does not work. You're best to go to the Editor's Forum to find help.

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I'm a Volunteer Editor and, since October of 2016, I've had 90 different authors contact me through the VE Section. Also, I always reply and keep my authors updated as to where their stories are queued.

Don't bother with the list of editors. It's useless. Most of them are no longer active. Get chatting to some people on the forum and persuade one of them to volunteer.

And don't pay too much attention to the anonymous sneering commenters. They often claim that a story is full of errors when it isn't.

DIY. Do it yourself

I think I read through my first story a couple of times. Got ripped apart for punctuation, speaking, paragraphs etc. My second story maybe four times and generally regarded as a big improvement. My third story I must have read through about 10 times, acting as my own editor, maybe a couple more. The first three times altered it fairly substantially. After that I read it every day, it’s only about 4000 words/two pages, making small changes such as changing a word, altering punctuation. I had the basic plot pop into my head and buzzing around for about a week before I wrote the first draft. I’m proud of the result and intend to continue editing my own work.

So using that as a basic rule of thumb I think that after writing a story of about 27,000 words (?) I would have spent another 2 to 3 weeks editing it one page at a time regularly going back to read it from the beginning to check on the continuity of the storyline.

Now what I say may be completely wrong because I’m inexperienced as a writer and as time goes by, and still acting as my own editor, I may change my mind. What I also do is read the stories of good writers, not just for enjoyment, but because my mind subconsciously takes in information that I will then use without realising.

My wife edits for me. She may not be interested in the story much but she has eyes for catching things. I do as well, yet she always finds the things I miss. Even after going through it ten times, I still manage to miss things. Nothing beats a different set of eyes. What you think flows perfectly, may not make sense to others. The story is in your head and as such, you automatically fill in the missing material that would help a different reader.

Find someone to at least read your stories before you publish. You'll be amazed at the things they come up with.

My latest still has an extra character on page 1, 39th paragraph down. (conversation counted as a paragraph) There's an extra 'I' that got missed in a copy paste. We both missed it. But she's nabbed so many more that I could never fault her. Plus I don't like sleeping on the couch...

Sir_Maveric said:

Find someone to at least read your stories before you publish. You'll be amazed at the things they come up with. My wife edits for me. She always finds the things I miss..

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I never thought about a wife editing. Probably because my wife doesn’t know of my interest in literotica and I’m sure all hell would break loose if she found out about my hobby. Plus I can’t think of anyone else who I could ask and who was capable of doing it. It would be funny if I discovered my next door neighbour was also writing for here. lol.

Here is the story

https://www.literotica.com/s/discovering-sarah-pt-01

OK, there are a few typos and mistakes: 'absolutley', 'go down another woman', 'no double beds'. But they are minor slips and not very frequent so they don't distract the reader from the story imho, as confirmed by the high scores.