As some will know, I've recently published my second book.

Pre-publish activities include a great deal of review, and trying to eradicate every last issue.

Well it doesn't work - at least not perfectly.

I get my first physical copy of the published book, and leafing through it, my eye settles on a classic mistake.

"blah blah!" He said.

Capitalisation of a personal pronoun directly after an exclamation mark, as if, the exclamation mark was the end of the sentence???

I spit chips ... spill my coffee and throw my mug at the nearest wall where it shatters into a thousand pieces... steaming ... crushed ... I drop to my knees, throw my shaking fists into the air and scream, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

I check the source file, and do a search for '!" H' and the possible variations involving a '?' and an 'S'.

I find another instance....

Spewing!

I then discover an internal dialog quote, you know the sort where someone says, "And then Bill said, 'blighty,' and I just couldn't believe my ears."

Where the trailing ' was some other sort of 'other' notation, something like `, or some other font???

My right eye started to twitch uncontrollably....

[INSERT Cluster F-Bomb]...

Then I'm looking at one of my combat scenes, something I'm actually quite good at, and I'm just not happy, it's looking clunky - I'm sure it could be better. I want to change it...

(This is me drawing a line...) _____________________________________________

Right - I'm just going to let this go. Allow a couple of very small errors that 99% of people will just gloss straight over because they wont see it - because they're absorbed in the story....

Because I know where this road leads, and that is to a personal hell of endless revision and rework, and zero productivity.

I just thought I would share this experience of 'being a novelist,' with all of you. I'm sure some of you will relate to my little tale of woe and the necessity of drawing a line under a finished piece of work.