Perfectionism

I’m reading Protector of the Flight for copy edits and just got an advanced copy of Heart Quest and started reading it as my “bath book” (thanks to Nora Roberts and her Key of Knowledge for the various category of reads…) So, for Protector, I’m trying to make sure that what is in my head made it on the page.

I noticed with a sigh some copy editing mistakes in Heart Quest, a misplaced comma that added confusion, two sets of possessives on one word. My only defense for this is that pages can get messy, marks that don’t mean anything can become letters, typos can be missed, a whole line can be deleted except for the last possessive.

But there are Author Mistakes that bother me – Marrec’s last name in Guardian of Honor was Gardpont. In Sorceress of Faith, it was Guardpont (and at the beginning of the series it was Guardpoint).

I’ve learned that, thankfully, many of these mistakes are ONLY seen by the author, and, though I don’t want to get sloppy, it is a relief. In Heart Thief I deleted a whole village during Holm’s and Tinne’s trek. That bothered me, but no one even knew there should have been four villages visited, not three. I still shudder at the mistake I made in Heart Duel, first describing a room (Marian was an interior designer, rehabbing a Residence for Straif) as having honey-colored panelling and then much later in the book it had plaster walls. No one’s said anything about that one, so I think it, too, slipped unnoticed.

But perfectionsim can be a quality many of us possess. Get over it. Nothing will ever be perfect. Not the book that doesn’t QUITE match the vision in your mind, and certainly not the book on the shelf with the occassional blooper.

May perfectionism not plague you today,
Robin