Car Update

Today is an exciting day. Firstly, this is the first day that I have driven to work...in my new car. Last night, I picked it up from the Car Dude, and I was very happy.

Sadly, when I put $15. of gas n the tank, it did not fill it up all the way. It didn't even give me a half tank. This is sad. Because the Honda used to be full--almost full--on that. This might hurt.

But the glory of a car that not only has cupholders (this is my first car with cupholders) but also remote-start overwhelms the grief at gas prices! I regret that I don't have pictures right now, but it was dark when I got home, so I couldn't take them. It was also sort-of dark when I got here this morning, so no pictures.

Also, I am pretty lazy.

Here is what I must do:
1. Get a wheel thing to replace the one this car has, because it is not so pretty and kind of grungy because mechanics have been driving around in the car with oily hands. They cleaned it, but still. I tried to take it off, but the wheel's surface looks like it's pretty delicate and not-so-nice. I need a cover. Badly.

2. Go by the bank to continue the stress of financial arrangements. This will not be my bank, because they were planning on giving me an 18-21% interest rate, and no thank you. I mean...ouch.

3. Clean out the Honda, removing six or so years of wreckage from my life, including books, one skein of yarn, CD's, and money from the ash tray. And the rainbow umberella that made my college years so much more interesting.

4. Stop freaking out about letting the Honda go. And getting the new car, which doesn't have a name or nickname yet. And that's sad.

5. Really, I've got to stop the freaking out thing. This is getting ridiculous. I am doing the right thing. The Right Thing.

Okay. Deep breath...fine. I'm done now.

In other news, here is something I think is wrong with the world:

Do people not think that copy editing their novel is a good thing? Do people not thing editing is good, necessary, and wise?

I mean, say I decide to self-publish a future novel. I will have to invest some serious money to do this--or, to do this right. Or, I could crap out and be cheap, make the whole thing myself and then just send it over the internet with the hope that something terrible might not happen.

I can understand how option one might not be the most fun. It gets expensive. But, here's the thing...if I am self-publishing, I assume I am doing this because I want to be published. I want my novel out there in the world, for other people to read. So, I do this with the hope that someone out there will pick up my book and say: "This thing ought to be making this girl big money, or at least readily available at my local Barnes and Nobles."

Then, the person would contact me, because I would have contact info in the book, as all smart self-publishers do. They would say, "Hey, I think I can sell this book," and I would laugh because I would have already tried.

Envision the alternative...I run my book off on a copy machine at my local Office Max, then paste a cover over it. Or I pay someone else to do that. No one checks for misspellings, freakish grammar problems, or typos. Then, that same guy who liked my book in the other story picks up this version of the same novel. Then they say, "Ugh! This thing has four glaring errors in the first two pages! This is horrible!" and they put it down without reading the whole thing, because they are completly grossed out by grammar problems, like I am.

Bearing in mind that I write this blog in the same manner in which I speak, not as if I am intelligent or even well-educated in the English language, I can write well.

Even I know, though, that you can't just throw a book out into the world with it looking like a third grader wrote it. You need to pay attention to how you are presenting your novel to the people you really hope will pick it up and read it, someday.

And those people might be a huge mob of rabid teenagers dripping with hormones, or they might be just my friends and my family (who don't love me enough to read this blog; they love me, just not enough for this...sigh).

So I didn't let them put that book, the one I looked at with the four glaring errors in the first two pages, in the YA section. If adult wants it, they can have it. But it's like...fifty pages long, and two of them have mistakes...? No.

Now, all I have to do is get the bad taste out of my mouth that reading bad writing gave me. Ugh.