Well Howdy!
Sunday, April 13th, 2008I have found that weekly blogs are more up my alley than daily so check back once a week to see what is new.
As a writer, I find that there are such moments of doubt and then moments of clarity that I must be in a zone to write and editing is done in a much more conscious state. At least you hope you are conscious when your editing I know I do. The mind sees what it wants, what it believes it is has ready put on the page. So here are some tips I have used that really help in finding those crazy little nits that pop up in the written word.
- Read the work aloud. Sometimes if you read it aloud even to yourself, you will catch things that would have been easily missed previously.
- Print your work. While reading touch each word with a pen so your brain sees each one.
- Give a friend or writing group a chance to look at your work so they can catch what you have missed or not thought of. There is a link on the blog rolls of this page to the online writes group I use most regularly. They are a great group of people who are all about helping and not about beating you up and they are from all over the world.
- Hang upside down and read so you get a new perspective.
- Don’t rely on just your spell check to catch you errors. Not a one of them is full proof.
- Make a list of the thing you consistently do wrong in your writing. For me there and their, where and were are a couple of examples.
- Use a great online dictionary. I like http://www.wordsmyth.net/home.php but there are a ton of them out there you can use free.
- Walk away for a while a day is better than a few minutes and a few weeks is even better if you have the time. When you come back, you will have a fresh out look and may be able to make it flow better.
Keep writing I know I will!
Rhonda R. Carpenter
