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BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 81 / / So You Want to Write about American Indians? / Devon Abbott Mihesuah 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [First Page] [81], (1) Lines: 0 to 22 ——— -0.29977pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [81], (1) chapter seven Editing Your Work Everyone, no matter how skilled in writing, must edit his/her work. Rarely can a writer create an adequate product in only one draft. I’m not the only writer who has become frustrated by editing my writing – sometimes rewriting a dozen times – only to find yet another error after the“final”read. I estimate that research is 20 percent of my work. The first draft is never particularly daunting to write and takes up 10 percent of the energy, while editing and rewriting is 70 percent of my effort. Some writers feel that they can rewrite endlessly, but you have to cut it off someplace and hope you have done the best you can. A colleague of mine who wrote a book on Indians in Kansas expressed his dismay to me that the finished book stated the Civil War started in 1961. Whose fault is this? A finger could be pointed at the author and the copyeditor and/or proofreader and even the editor. Another friend who wrote more than twenty nonacademic books (including fiction,romance,and military history) before his death told me that all the author has to do is submit a book with great content and the copyeditor takes care of the rest. I disagree. No one is perfect, not even a skilled copyeditor.You should not leave it up to others to correct your mistakes, not even those whom you pay to edit your work. Some presses are garnering reputations at being careless at proofing and you don’t want to contribute to that image. You do the best you can before you submit the manuscript. This saves time, energy, and aggravation for the person hired to edit your work. Content and Presentation For both journal and book submissions it is crucial that authors send their best work, not a messy draft that promises something wonderful in the future. Editors have no time for promises. ● Double-check your sources. Many scholars make the mistake of cit81 BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 82 / / So You Want to Write about American Indians? / Devon Abbott Mihesuah editing your work 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [82], (2) Lines: 22 to 50 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [82], (2) ing a secondary source, that is, they take a “fact” from another book then cite that book. You must always look at the sources that author used and then scrutinize them. It is surprising how many errors authors make, and it is your responsibility to make certain that you don’t copy them. Some books have become models of copying: that is, the authors merely cite each other. ● Be sure the footnotes match the text. ● Make sure your title adequately conveys what is in the book and that it does not promise more than you can deliver. ● Double-space and print only on one side of clean paper. ● Be sure the pages are right-side up, accounted for, in order, and numbered. ● Check and recheck for grammar and spelling errors. ● Read the work out loud or have someone read it to you. For both fiction and nonfiction, you can catch many errors hearing the work read out loud. ● Do not include everything you found about a topic and do not belabor any issue. Knowing what to exclude is as important as knowing what to include. ● Omit words if doing so does not alter the meaning of the text. If you can lose an entire sentence, do the same thing, no matter how much you like that sentence.You can always use it in another work. Don’t fret about losing that great statement forever. Louise Erdrich has said that she refers to discarded work, that is, “old wrecks,” like a car junkyard where she finds parts for a new work. ● Be creative in your descriptors. You don...

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