Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Fair Is Fair

     I have found two excellent proofreaders and editors in my wife and her sister, Joan. Both think alike and pick up on many of the same grammatical errors. And here's the good thing. One always finds what the other one misses. Another good thing. They both offer excellent suggestions to tighten up the story timeline and the plot in general. They instinctively know story pacing. A third good thing. They work for free. Well, at least my sister-in-law does. My wife runs a tally on the hours she puts in looking through my pages. The time starts when she picks up her red pen and it ends when she sets it down. At some point I have to match the hours with house chores or other forms of physical labor
     She worked 14 hours on Swan Loch. I know this because she posted the hours on the refrigerator door. She then broke the hours down by chores and by the amount of time it would take to complete each one.
     Here is the way it looked:
     Weed the garden- 4 hours
     Paint the spare bedroom - 8 hours
     Stain the backyard deck - 6 hours
     Total - 14 hours
     My wife may be good at editing but her math skills aren't much. No sense in arguing about it. All in all, it's still a good deal. Thanks to her and her sister, Swan Loch will be available for sale within days.
     Now I must run. I need to get a jump on my editor's 'fair is fair' list. Lets see, paint the spare bedroom- 8 hours. Sounds like a plan.