Heroes Insider Weekly

Moondragon's Edit Yerself

Edit Yerself

By @AngelaStevens562

Moondragon and Hawkeye discuss editing…

 Moondragon: Hey Hawkeye what you up to?

Hawkeye: Uh, just doin’ some editing, I hate this stuff don’t you? Clicks mouse pounds on keyboard haphazardly.

Moondragon: Erm, I might be a little strange but I kinda like it.

Hawkeye: Huh you do. God, I can’t bear it. I mean, I’m not sure why I’m botherin’. I like what I’ve done and it’s not bad. There were only a few spelling mistakes.

Moondragon: I dunno, we owe it to our readers, you know. We shouldn’t throw out sub-par stuff. It’s up to us to present a quality product.

Hawkeye: There, I’m done. Sits back, rubs belly in satisfaction.

Moondragon: What? Really, how long did that take you?

Hawkeye: Oh forever, the whole book took me like, fifteen minutes.

Moondragon: That long eh? Quality job you must-a done there.

Hawkeye: I recognize that tone in your voice, that was sarcasm wasn’t it? Check it yourself, look, not one red squiggly line under any of the words, there you go all the spellings fixed.

Moondragon: So that’s all you did?

Hawkeye: Waddaya mean is that all? What else is there to do?

Moondragon: Well, editing is more than just running the spell checker on Word y’know.

Hawkeye: I know. Um…so…what else should I check, I can spare another ten minutes before I upload my book on Amazon, so hey lets go editing wild, yeah! What should I do? I know I could put my chapter titles in bold and…

Moondragon: Hawkeye, leans over starts reading text, eyes begin bleeding, are you honestly putting this up on Amazon?

Hawkeye: Sure a, next bestseller right there.

Moondragon: Oh right, so this is your last edit then, you were just tweaking the final draft. I’m sorry I misunderstood you.

Hawkeye: Final draft? What you on about Moondragon?

Moondragon: Well, I originally thought this was your first draft, ‘cos I thought it was the book you have been working on for the past three months and…

Hawkeye: …It is that book, I finished it at lunchtime and now I’m getting it ready to stick up on Amazon. By tomorrow, that coin is gonna be rolling all the way to my door.

Moondragon: Soooooo this is your first draft?

Hawkeye: Draft? What are you on about woman, this is my book. I finished it, thirty-five minutes ago. Now it is heading off to that wonderful-authors-best-friend-in-the-cloud, I am about to be published!

Moondragon: But you can’t publish your first draft! WTF Hawkeye, it’ll be full of plot holes, your tenses will be all over the place. Look, even from here I can see the thing is riddled with adverbs, awash with superfluous nouns, and look…prods screen… Did you buy a bumper box of exclamation marks from Costco ‘cos they seem to have spilled out all over your manuscript.  Nobody, NOBODY, N.O.B.O.D.Y publishes their first draft!