Fifty Shades of Edits

I got an ask to my personal account today asking if Fifty Shades of Edits was still running, so I figured it was time to make a little post here to update you guys a bit.

Short answer, YES. I swear I am still planning on finishing this horrible book, and posting my edits. Real life just kind of got in the way and put me on a bit of an unplanned hiatus.

I went back to school a few weeks ago, and it’s been eating up all of my time. I’m hoping to finally have time to queue up a bunch of posts on Saturday, since it’ll be the first day in over a month I am completely free. 

Sorry for the ridiculous delay, and thanks for sticking around! :)

<3 Sarah

mnemosynelethe asked: Re the email address: The story is set in 2011. I'm 21 and a college student, so I can safely say that what James wrote is pure BS. First off, every student has an email address, provided by the university. You get most of the important information per email, and the other important information, you look up online. In fact, you do almost everything online. And it is NOT optional. You HAVE to register for stuff online. You have to submit some course work online. Also, mandatory online tests.

Yeah, I was 21 yr old college student five years ago (2007) and it would have been impossible for me to make it through without an e-mail address. I’m sure that means in 2011 things would be ever more computer dependent. I mean, you register for classes online, there are sometimes mandatory discussion boards, online tests. It shows a pure disconnect on the writers part with the life that her character is leading.

A large portion of this chapter is wasted spent giving us the exact text of the contract and so many boring/stupid e-mails between Ana and ChristianGrey. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. There’s only about 6 pages of actual text in this 22 page chapter. Yes, you read that right, less than a third of the chapter is actual story. *shakes head*

The contract:

• Unnecessary and boring, but I get why she included it.
• However, if you are going to have excerpts from a contract appear multiple times in the book, please god, have them match up. There are direct contradictions in this contract with the one that she read a few chapters ago.

ChristianGrey bought her a MacBook Pro. Shocker. Having a guy come into her apartment and set it up for her seems a bit overkill though.

Her bewilderment over having and e-mail address it a bit much. I’m really tired of Ana’s “I’m so innocent and naive I don’t even know how to do things that a girl like me would need to know to survive” act.

Okay, the detail of the e-mail exchanges is just…unnecessary. If you take away the headers of the e-mails, this is what the second transaction reads:

ChristianGrey: I hope you had a good day at work

Ana: Sir…I had a very good day at work. Thank you

ChristianGrey: Delighted you had a good day. While you are e-mailing, you are not researching.

Ana: Stop e-mailing me, and I can start my assignment. I’d like another A.

ChristianGrey: Stop e-mailing me- and do your assignment. I’d like to award another A. The first one was so well deserved. :)

It continues much like that. Are they 12? Also, that conversation took up two pages of the book. TWO PAGES WERE DEDICATED TO THAT EXCHANGE.

At the end of the chapter Ana finally does a little bit of research about being a submissive. She researches what she is thinking about getting herself into and decides that it repulses her and makes her sick. Logically, this should be the end of the story right? She doesn’t like it. It’s not for her. She tells him no. End of story.

Tell me why I’m only halfway through the first of three novels.

I can’t wait to get home, the lure of e-mailing Christian, and maybe I can begin my research project.

You are not a sentence. These pieces do not go together.

1- What does that mean? How is a Hispanic-American smile different than a plain old American smile.

2- OH GOD. SO RACIST.

Ana is a 21 year old college student who is shocked to have an e-mail address.

I’m sorry. Even if this was set as much as 8 years ago (which I don’t think it was. I don’t remember an exact time frame right now but it was definitely in the last decade) she wouldn’t have been able to function as a college student without one.

I don’t think a mind can boggle. It can be boggled though.

ETA: No, *the* mind boggles… in the UK. Actually I’ve never heard of the mind *being boggled*. Perhaps this is a little-known Atlantic divide? (MY mind boggles doesn’t sound right to me either though.) (via syntactician)

Hmm..maybe I’ll just chalk this up to another case of James using out of place Briticisms.

If you don’t think you can do this, Ana. Don’t. It’s really not difficult

Last time I checked obey was a single word.

At the top we have the contract as it appears in Chapter 11. The bottom is a terribly edited picture of the way it appears in Chapter 7. Is it really that hard to just copy & paste a chunk of text so that you don’t have inconsistencies in your writing?

Unless this is supposed to be a newer, updated version of said contract, in which case I take away all of the ambiguity of my previous post. He didn’t make that change because he is trying to get one over on Ana, which is NOT okay.