Reading Aloud

I've heard it said that you should read your work out loud at least once during the editing process. It helps to catch repetitive sounds, over-used words, awkward or overlong sentences, etc. I'd never tried it until today, but I'm finding I like this technique.

One reason for reading aloud that I haven't heard discussed is the fact that it slows you down and forces you to focus on each word throughout the story, beginning to end. I think I have a bad habit when rereading my work of just going too fast. I know what happens, so my eyes start skimming over the passages and I lose track of what it is I'm supposed to be editing. Speaking the words makes me pace myself and give just as much attention to chapter 12 as I gave to chapter 2. 

There's an unexpected downside to reading a 79K word book out loud, though. At least for a heavily introverted person such as myself. My voice isn't used to talking this much! I'm barely halfway through and my throat is incredibly sore. I've had two cups of tea, two cups of coffee, and a bunch of water, but nothing has managed to soothe my throat enough that I can continue for the day.

*sigh*

I'll probably have to save the other half of the book for tomorrow, or risk losing my voice for a week. I wouldn't mind losing my voice if I didn't happen to have a day-job that requires human interaction. No one at the office knows I'm trying to get published, and I'd like to keep it that way for now. Explaining that I lost my voice from editing my manuscript will lead to a conversation I'm not ready for. Though, that's a post for another day.

Getting ahead of myself

 

I'm still in the process of editing book 1 in my series, and I've already started writing draft 2 of book 3! Why am I doing this to myself? It's distracting me from doing the work that I need to be doing right now.

And yet, it's not.

There were things I didn't realize I needed to include in book 1 until I started writing books 2 and 3. There were relationships I needed to set up and characters I needed to introduce. Things that were relevant to later parts of the story that I didn't want to just show up out of nowhere. I've read some book series (that shall remain nameless) that made the mistake of not introducing a very important plot point until the last book. It was jarring. Any attempt to figure out where the story was going was dashed by the late arrival of new information. I don't want to do that to my readers.

I try to at least outline my stories before I write them. But my outlines tend to get ignored by my characters. They take the story where they want it to go and I have to scramble to keep up. Once I know where the story is going, then I can go back and set it up so it makes sense to the reader. Sometimes that means going all the way back to the beginning (book 1) to set up something important that happens much later on (book 3).

I just started querying literary agents with book 1 of my potential 6 book series. Days after I sent out my first query letter, I realized what the major conflict would be for book 3 - something I'd been struggling with for over a year. Now I'm looking back at my already submitted manuscript to see if there's anything I need to change in order to set things up just right. Maybe I jumped the gun with sending out queries. I know I have time to change the manuscript - it hasn't even been accepted by an agent yet, let alone a publisher. I'm glad I have the time to work on it some more. I want readers to enjoy the whole series, not just book 1. It all has to work together.

#ReadyToPubish ... dear gods help me

What little kid doesn't dream of being a published author some day? At least for a moment in time. There's probably some out there,  but most of us have had a story in us at some point or another that we wanted to share with the world. The hard part is sitting down, putting one word after another, and bringing the story from theory to actuality.

Well, I did that.

... Now what?

Oh, yeah. Get published.

Yikes!

The story that finally came out of me is not profound. It's not life changing. It may never be a best seller or turned into a movie. But I love it. I love my characters. I love the struggles they experience and how they overcome them. And, possibly most important of all, I loved writing them into existence. I loved spending hours upon hours staring at blank notebook pages and willing my characters to tell me what happens next. It really is their story, I'm just the one lucky enough to get to put it on paper.

But now I have the daunting task of trying to get published. Terrifying, I know. Anyone know a good literary agent that works with YA novels of the LGBTQIA+ variety? No? Didn't think so. Ah, well. I'll keep looking. Wish me luck!