As a new elementary school teacher, I learned how much angst a red mark on a paper caused for some young students. You can’t even imagine the distress I felt when the use of my newly acquired red pencil caused tears. My way of correcting this problem was to mark papers with a variety of colors and save the red pencil for making stars and happy faces. The students never said how this worked for them, but I soon discovered that the parents were quite happy with the change.
I think the editor assigned to my novel must have been one of those students who hated it when teachers “bled” all over her papers, and I’m guessing this is why she used a very efficient color-coded editing system. If she thought something should be removed from the manuscript, it was highlighted in gray. Passages she wanted me to review for possible rewording were highlighted in green. If she had a suggestion regarding plot, voice, word choice, or a scene element, she typed a message using blue fonts. Red was the designated color for my responses. Red is the power color and I used that power often.
Even without red corrections, I was sometimes annoyed when something I valued was being questioned. However, despite the pain of the editing process, it is a good feeling when someone comments positively about various aspects of my writing, including some teacher types who might, at times, be viewed as picky.
There was no outside editor for the second edition of Child of Desire, but to date I have been told about just one error. Yes, it was a teacher who let me know. No use of a red pencil but just a sweet, “I did see one small error.”
Fortunately, Kindle Direct Publishing allows authors to make corrections.
~ Clipart, Public Domain
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