Patricia Hamill's Blog: I read too much! - Posts Tagged "tips"
Ah the joys of editing...
Today I hit the 70% complete mark for editing my third novel, a story about surviving the end of the world (via zombies) told through a young woman’s diary entries. So, I thought I'd take a break from editing to write about editing. Say that fast three times in a row.
Yes, I edit my own stories. And, yes, it is challenging to do that. Here's why.
First of all, I know what's coming. That can be a good thing when you’re writing a story but not always so good when you’re trying to edit one, because your mind will subconsciously fill in the blanks, leaving holes in your story that will trip up your readers. That's why I usually put my work aside for at least a few weeks before I attempt to edit it.
Second, I tend to think the way that I write, leaving eerily similar phrases with sometimes nearly identical word choices sprinkled throughout my stories, like little landmines waiting to annoy my readers. And guess what, I sometimes find myself unintentionally updating something that was originally unique into one of these landmines. Yikes. The only way I’ve found to counteract this is to edit with a pencil before making changes to my document. This ensures I’ll look at each passage at least twice before I make a final call on how something’s worded.
Third, you can do a lot of damage to your work if you’re tired or if you’ve been at it too long. I only work on edits and rewrites when I’m fresh. As soon as my eyes cross (and preferably before then) I put away the paper and pencil and do something else.
Fourth, the enemy of any self-editor is impatience. Editing is tedious work, time-consuming and at times mind-numbing. At times, I find myself saying, ‘eh, that’s good enough,’ but usually, that’s just before my eyes start crossing. Other times, I’ll switch to prompts like ‘look at this again’, ‘rewrite’ or the vague circled phrase. And in some cases, those last few pages or passages will be suspiciously bereft of comments and corrections. Whenever I see any of these signs, I make a point to go over those sections again with a fresh eye.
Finally, it’s easy to forget that your writing must not only be correct, but also entertaining. I find it incredibly important to read my stories from beginning to end in the same way my readers will: on an e-reader and as a paperback. After all, if my stories can’t keep my attention, they certainly won’t capture anyone else’s.
On that note, I’m off to work on my other project, a loom knitted sock that’s turning into a loom knitted boot. Ah well, maybe I’ll turn it into a Christmas stocking.
Yes, I edit my own stories. And, yes, it is challenging to do that. Here's why.
First of all, I know what's coming. That can be a good thing when you’re writing a story but not always so good when you’re trying to edit one, because your mind will subconsciously fill in the blanks, leaving holes in your story that will trip up your readers. That's why I usually put my work aside for at least a few weeks before I attempt to edit it.
Second, I tend to think the way that I write, leaving eerily similar phrases with sometimes nearly identical word choices sprinkled throughout my stories, like little landmines waiting to annoy my readers. And guess what, I sometimes find myself unintentionally updating something that was originally unique into one of these landmines. Yikes. The only way I’ve found to counteract this is to edit with a pencil before making changes to my document. This ensures I’ll look at each passage at least twice before I make a final call on how something’s worded.
Third, you can do a lot of damage to your work if you’re tired or if you’ve been at it too long. I only work on edits and rewrites when I’m fresh. As soon as my eyes cross (and preferably before then) I put away the paper and pencil and do something else.
Fourth, the enemy of any self-editor is impatience. Editing is tedious work, time-consuming and at times mind-numbing. At times, I find myself saying, ‘eh, that’s good enough,’ but usually, that’s just before my eyes start crossing. Other times, I’ll switch to prompts like ‘look at this again’, ‘rewrite’ or the vague circled phrase. And in some cases, those last few pages or passages will be suspiciously bereft of comments and corrections. Whenever I see any of these signs, I make a point to go over those sections again with a fresh eye.
Finally, it’s easy to forget that your writing must not only be correct, but also entertaining. I find it incredibly important to read my stories from beginning to end in the same way my readers will: on an e-reader and as a paperback. After all, if my stories can’t keep my attention, they certainly won’t capture anyone else’s.
On that note, I’m off to work on my other project, a loom knitted sock that’s turning into a loom knitted boot. Ah well, maybe I’ll turn it into a Christmas stocking.
Writing for work and fun...
Today, I decided to write about the various types of writing I do, including creative writing, of course. Here's the breakdown, in order of highest to lowest volume.
1. Business writing (emails, memos, standard operating procedures, etc.)
2. Instructional Writing (training materials, eLearning Courses, lesson plans)
3. Creative Writing (stories)
4. Social Writing (blogs, essays, and reviews)
As you can see, the majority of the writing I do falls into the Business and Instructional Writing categories (my day job), but I spend a great deal of time at home on the Creative and Social Writing.
Because each type of writing requires a significantly different approach, I will go over each one briefly:
Business writing:
Focus: Be short, sweet, and to the point.
Purposes: To convey information, to persuade others, to provide instructions, and to record information
Prewriting: For business writing, I typically use outlining, free-writing, and the occasional brainstorm or mind-map when the topic is complex or the outline eludes me.
Downside: You're typically writing for an audience that has limited time and doesn't really want to read what you've wrote. You'll lose your reader if you add too many details or present information with too many words. Personally, I tend to explain/describe too much and have to sweep through my business documents to cull the fluff out of them.
Instructional writing:
Focus: Be accurate, informative/demonstrative, concise, and interesting.
Purposes: To inform, to transfer skills/knowledge, to influence attitudes/behaviors, and to entertain (up to a point, of course).
Prewriting: Typically, I use mind-mapping and outlining when I design training materials, but the trick to a good training outline is to remember the purpose for the training. What better way to define the purpose than to start with SMART objectives. I won't go into objectives just now because I could devote an entire post to the topic. Next, I determine whether the training must focus on teaching knowledge vs. teaching a skill, because that determines the order in which information is presented. To teach a topic (knowledge), it is best to begin with the simple and build your way up to the complex. To teach a task (skill), it is best to go in the order that a person is expected to perform the activities. Once I have objectives and a content outline (in the right order), then I fill in all the details. Seem like a lot of work? You bet it is, but taking a structured approach, like ADDIE, helps. Check out this ISU College of Education writup on the ADDIE method: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate.
Downside: You're writing to change a person's knowledge, skills and attitudes (or behavior), but it is extremely easy to give too much information or to go on tangents. If your efforts to focus the training on the topic at hand fail, you're likely to confuse the audience or emphasize things they don't need to know. Another important thing you may overlook is gaining buy-in. If you're teaching adults, and you don't convince them why they should care about what you're teaching, you'll lose their attention (and you may even turn them against you).
Creative writing:
Focus: Be entertaining, show/don't tell, make sense (even when writing fiction), and draw the reader into the story.
Purposes: To entertain, to explore ideas, to convince, and to invoke emotion/empathy/sympathy.
Prewriting: My favorite methods are mind-mapping, drawing, and free-writing. For more information, check out my earlier post, Time to get Writing!
Downside: Like other types of writing, having a plan is vital, and if you don’t have one, your writing will suffer. For creative writing, this plan can incorporate the plot, character arcs, or any other number of elements. Whether you start with a plan or develop it as you write, consistency is key. Editing, rewriting and second opinions can help you determine whether your story has hit the mark you intended it to hit.
Social writing:
Focus: Be entertaining, true, concise, and friendly (or unfriendly, depending on your goal).
Purposes: To share opinions/experiences/information, to meet/connect with/stay in touch with others, and to fulfill a need for social interaction.
Prewriting: It depends. I doubt many people pre-write for tweets, Facebook posts, or message board posts, but I definitely put some thought and planning into blog posts and book reviews.
Downside: Social networks are fun and often friendly, but it's easy to forget that everyone can see what you've wrote, and it's likely to stay on the web forever. I recommending giving a second and third look to everything you plan to share with the world. Consider the possible reactions of your boss (or future bosses), your friends, your family, and even your enemies. If what you're writing is inflammatory, insulting, or just in bad taste, you might want to abort the post. Finally, due to the ease of sharing and posting online, don't forget the importance of accuracy. Wiki's are a good example of where information can go astray to the detriment of any who take them at face value. Check out this classic clip from the Colbert Report (The Word-Wikiality), which is both amusing and disturbing at the same time.
1. Business writing (emails, memos, standard operating procedures, etc.)
2. Instructional Writing (training materials, eLearning Courses, lesson plans)
3. Creative Writing (stories)
4. Social Writing (blogs, essays, and reviews)
As you can see, the majority of the writing I do falls into the Business and Instructional Writing categories (my day job), but I spend a great deal of time at home on the Creative and Social Writing.
Because each type of writing requires a significantly different approach, I will go over each one briefly:
Business writing:
Focus: Be short, sweet, and to the point.
Purposes: To convey information, to persuade others, to provide instructions, and to record information
Prewriting: For business writing, I typically use outlining, free-writing, and the occasional brainstorm or mind-map when the topic is complex or the outline eludes me.
Downside: You're typically writing for an audience that has limited time and doesn't really want to read what you've wrote. You'll lose your reader if you add too many details or present information with too many words. Personally, I tend to explain/describe too much and have to sweep through my business documents to cull the fluff out of them.
Instructional writing:
Focus: Be accurate, informative/demonstrative, concise, and interesting.
Purposes: To inform, to transfer skills/knowledge, to influence attitudes/behaviors, and to entertain (up to a point, of course).
Prewriting: Typically, I use mind-mapping and outlining when I design training materials, but the trick to a good training outline is to remember the purpose for the training. What better way to define the purpose than to start with SMART objectives. I won't go into objectives just now because I could devote an entire post to the topic. Next, I determine whether the training must focus on teaching knowledge vs. teaching a skill, because that determines the order in which information is presented. To teach a topic (knowledge), it is best to begin with the simple and build your way up to the complex. To teach a task (skill), it is best to go in the order that a person is expected to perform the activities. Once I have objectives and a content outline (in the right order), then I fill in all the details. Seem like a lot of work? You bet it is, but taking a structured approach, like ADDIE, helps. Check out this ISU College of Education writup on the ADDIE method: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate.
Downside: You're writing to change a person's knowledge, skills and attitudes (or behavior), but it is extremely easy to give too much information or to go on tangents. If your efforts to focus the training on the topic at hand fail, you're likely to confuse the audience or emphasize things they don't need to know. Another important thing you may overlook is gaining buy-in. If you're teaching adults, and you don't convince them why they should care about what you're teaching, you'll lose their attention (and you may even turn them against you).
Creative writing:
Focus: Be entertaining, show/don't tell, make sense (even when writing fiction), and draw the reader into the story.
Purposes: To entertain, to explore ideas, to convince, and to invoke emotion/empathy/sympathy.
Prewriting: My favorite methods are mind-mapping, drawing, and free-writing. For more information, check out my earlier post, Time to get Writing!
Downside: Like other types of writing, having a plan is vital, and if you don’t have one, your writing will suffer. For creative writing, this plan can incorporate the plot, character arcs, or any other number of elements. Whether you start with a plan or develop it as you write, consistency is key. Editing, rewriting and second opinions can help you determine whether your story has hit the mark you intended it to hit.
Social writing:
Focus: Be entertaining, true, concise, and friendly (or unfriendly, depending on your goal).
Purposes: To share opinions/experiences/information, to meet/connect with/stay in touch with others, and to fulfill a need for social interaction.
Prewriting: It depends. I doubt many people pre-write for tweets, Facebook posts, or message board posts, but I definitely put some thought and planning into blog posts and book reviews.
Downside: Social networks are fun and often friendly, but it's easy to forget that everyone can see what you've wrote, and it's likely to stay on the web forever. I recommending giving a second and third look to everything you plan to share with the world. Consider the possible reactions of your boss (or future bosses), your friends, your family, and even your enemies. If what you're writing is inflammatory, insulting, or just in bad taste, you might want to abort the post. Finally, due to the ease of sharing and posting online, don't forget the importance of accuracy. Wiki's are a good example of where information can go astray to the detriment of any who take them at face value. Check out this classic clip from the Colbert Report (The Word-Wikiality), which is both amusing and disturbing at the same time.
Are you the victim of human auto-correct?
Do you find yourself sending an email only to notice glaring errors only moments later? Do you hit publish or post, only to find comments about your grammar, or lack thereof, sprinkled throughout subsequent comments and reviews? If so, you may be the victim of human auto-correct.
The human brain is a wonderful thing. It helps us make sense of a chaotic world and helps us react accordingly; but, similar to the auto-correct on your phone, the brain also subconsciously hides, or auto-corrects, inconsistencies, errors and omissions we encounter in the written word. A duplicate word becomes invisible, a misspelling is overlooked, and missing words are filled in.
Surely, you've seen blurbs where almost every word is a jumble of letters, but you were able to read the message anyway. Take the following example.
The qicuk bworn fox jmups oevr the lzay dgos.
You probably read this with no problems. In fact, so long as the first and last letter of a word is in place, most people's minds will substitute the correct word, especially if there's context to go with it.
This is fine for someone who's reading for fun, but if you're trying to put out a well-edited novel, an email, or even a Facebook post, it causes problems. Especially when that misspelled word is one of thousands, buried in the middle of a paragraph, or technically spelled correctly (but with a totally different meaning than you intended). And, what about this one?
Today's is sunny with a chance of showers.
I bet your mind replaced the missing word (or perhaps you just dropped the "is"). Ever wonder how someone can write a sentence and miss an entire word? We do it all the time. The good news is that there are things you can do to overcome the human brain's tendency to auto-correct:
1. Use spell and grammar check. This gives you a headstart and highlights things like misspellings, double words, and incomplete sentences. Overcoming the brain's auto-correct for these things is tough. Why not use technology to your advantage?
2. Don't rely on spell and grammar check. It won't catch words that are spelled correctly, which also happen to mean something totally unintended.
3. Review your work multiple times and focus on specific errors each time. Read once for flow, once for spelling, once for commas and paragraph breaks, etc. Forcing your brain to look for a specific feature, like double words, helps you perceive what your brain would normally overlook.
4. Review your work in different media formats. Try marking up the document on your word processor, on a pdf, and on a printed copy. Seeing the document in different formats forces your brain to look at it in a different way and may just give you the edge you need to overcome human auto-correct.
5. If possible, mark up the document on a different day than when you wrote it (and correct it on a different day than when you marked it up). The closer you are to the time you wrote the document, the more likely your brain will overlook the same errors.
6. Finally, slow down! Review slowly and read each word, each sentence, one at a time. If you're normally a speedy reader, slowly draw your finger along under the text to help you do this. This also help you isolate each word in your mind and help prevent your mind from taking over.
Remember, use technology to your advantage, review multiple times, review in multiple media, separate the act of writing and reviewing (and correcting), and slow down. Following these tips may help your solo editing efforts, but they're no substitute for getting more eyes on your document. Once you think you have it perfect, let someone else take a look.
I'd love to hear your own human auto-correct woes and solutions. Share them in the comments!
Self-publishers Rejoice-New Goodies on CreateSpace and KDP
Today I logged on to CreateSpace to add a final polishing update to my upcoming book, Forgotten Valor, which is scheduled to be released November 20, 2013, and discovered some new goodies.
For those of you who don't know, CreateSpace is a self-publishing platform for print-on-demand paperbacks. It can be a pain to format your book for print, but it's awesome to be able to order prints and distribute them and to keep no inventory when you don't have a buyer lined up.
Ok, back to the point. I logged on and there right across the top of the dashboard were two announcements.
1. The long begged for (if you read the CS message boards) matte finish is now available. Not every book works with a shiny cover. Now you can order them with a nice soft finish. Excellent!
2. Expanded distribution to bookstores and libraries is now free, whereas before it required self-publishers to pay a fee. Of course, just as before, sending it out through middlemen to extra outlets requires a slightly higher price, but the option is there, and the mark up isn't all that much.
So, if you publish your books for print with CreateSpace, take a look.
I signed up all my books for the expanded distribution, which doesn't guarantee your book will be carried by other distributors, but does make it possible. I already have one showing up on B&N, but it didn't do that until I expanded all my e-books to them via Smashwords. I think there's a connection there, but I can't prove it.
On a related note, Kindle Direct Publishing also has some new coolness to offer. Their Kindle Match Book is live, allowing readers who buy a book in print to get a copy of the Kindle edition at a discount. And it's awesome because you don't have to be enrolled in Kindle Select.
The second new thing on KDP is an ability to set up better promotions for Kindle Select books. I didn't look at it too closely because you have to sell your ebooks exclusively on Amazon to enroll, and I'm trying to expand my distribution, not limit it. But for those of you interested in selling on Amazon, only, it's definitely worth a look.
So to all, happy publishing!
For those of you who don't know, CreateSpace is a self-publishing platform for print-on-demand paperbacks. It can be a pain to format your book for print, but it's awesome to be able to order prints and distribute them and to keep no inventory when you don't have a buyer lined up.
Ok, back to the point. I logged on and there right across the top of the dashboard were two announcements.
1. The long begged for (if you read the CS message boards) matte finish is now available. Not every book works with a shiny cover. Now you can order them with a nice soft finish. Excellent!
2. Expanded distribution to bookstores and libraries is now free, whereas before it required self-publishers to pay a fee. Of course, just as before, sending it out through middlemen to extra outlets requires a slightly higher price, but the option is there, and the mark up isn't all that much.
So, if you publish your books for print with CreateSpace, take a look.
I signed up all my books for the expanded distribution, which doesn't guarantee your book will be carried by other distributors, but does make it possible. I already have one showing up on B&N, but it didn't do that until I expanded all my e-books to them via Smashwords. I think there's a connection there, but I can't prove it.
On a related note, Kindle Direct Publishing also has some new coolness to offer. Their Kindle Match Book is live, allowing readers who buy a book in print to get a copy of the Kindle edition at a discount. And it's awesome because you don't have to be enrolled in Kindle Select.
The second new thing on KDP is an ability to set up better promotions for Kindle Select books. I didn't look at it too closely because you have to sell your ebooks exclusively on Amazon to enroll, and I'm trying to expand my distribution, not limit it. But for those of you interested in selling on Amazon, only, it's definitely worth a look.
So to all, happy publishing!
