Read very carefully

I am still in the process of preparing the manuscript for my third Echoes Series book, Turbulence. I plan to be finished by Wednesday, insha Allah.

I take a long time because I know soon the manuscript will go to the printers. I can't afford to let any mistakes slide by.

And I have found several. In many places, I simply forgot to type in a word. I became so involved with the story line that I forgot about my words and just writing. Oops, I mean kept writing.

I've also found many places where another word would be more suitable. I grimace at the number of sentences in which I repeated a word a number of times. Oops, I mean more than once. To correct that, a thesaurus is indispensable. I have many in my house. My favorite is fairly new. Check out "Flip Dictionary." It's the best thesaurus I've ever found.

And of course sometimes I smply forgt a leter or mispell a wrd. Can't let the manuscript go to the printers looking like that. The amazing thing is, I can read through a manuscript several times without catching those little errors. (I should have used a thesaurus to find another word for manuscript back there, but my Flip Dictionary is another room. My thirteen-year old, a budding writer, was using it.)

Finally, having an editor is indispensable. I sent Innocent People to the presses without any help--I was the sole editor, and it shows.

We all have to read the fine print. You can have the best plot line the world has ever seen, and write it eloquently, but if you send it out into with any of these errors, you can never hope to be on the New York Times bestseller list. Or even the Podunkville Times.