I've been polishing the first 60 pages of a new WIP to a glossy, high shine, (well, that's my intention, anyway,) and found a new way to catch all my stupid little errors.
All writers have these trademarks screw-ups when they write. For me it's sometimes writing "slid" when I mean "slide" and vice-versa, or writing "breath" when I mean "breathe" and vice-versa. I also skip words frequently. It's almost as if my mind is going faster than my typing fingers and I leave out words in my haste to get everything written.
One of my other writerly "quirks" is an inability to really SEE my work when I've been spending so much time with it. Normally I need to let the pages sit and cool off for a while (like a couple weeks) so I can go back and reread it with fresh eyes. This is a common technique with writers. However, I don't have that kind of time in this situation.
So I learned that if I change the way the WIP looks, I catch typos, missing words, wrong words and just general badness-that-needs-changing. If I switch the font from Courier New to Times New Roman, I catch stuff. If I take my whole WIP, copy it and drop into my email acct and read it that way, I catch stuff.
Cool, huh?
Yeah, I'm a geek, I know. It does work, though. At least, it works for me.
Comments:
Hmmm I will have to try that. I'm finding it harder and harder to walk away from it long enough to see it again.
