Thursday, March 10, 2011

A New Way to Edit...

Finally, after days of reading and re-reading this manuscript for grammatical errors, spelling errors, and obvious mistakes, the technical part of the editing is done.

Thank goodness I have a husband who doesn't mind that I can become a rather neurotic pain in the butt when I'm under pressure :)

Now, with just a few days to go, we have decided to take a different approach to flushing out some of the ideas and flow. Starting yesterday, I began reading the manuscript out loud as he listened. I stopped every few paragraphs or so and he would give me his initial reaction.

This way, if he had a question, didn't understand something, or found that something didn't really make sense, I could pause my reading, adjust what I needed to adjust, and then re-read the newly written section for him.

Although I probably wouldn't recommend this particular method for writing, it does really seem to help with speeding things along for this project.

I assume (possibly incorrectly) that a lot of writers out there aren't comfortable with reading their unfinished manuscripts out loud to someone else. I know that even just a few short months ago I probably wouldn't have felt very comfortable. In fact, even just yesterday it took me a little while to get started because I was uncomfortable. But I am so glad that we started this method for this project. It really helped me smooth a lot of things out rather quickly.

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