Listen.

You know how you have those few friends who will tell you when you have spinach in your teeth? Or that your tag is sticking out? Or that those jeans… um, maybe not today? Our Lindsey Grant is one of those people. I can count on Lindsey to tell me, for example, when I have chocolate on my face. (Which is quite regularly—see, there are these vegan chocolate chip cookies at Sweet Adeline and they are so very good though the chocolate is just a bit messy and I'm focusing so hard on my work that I sometimes miss my mouth…) I could walk around the office all day, even venture out into the world, with chocolate on my face, and might not know it because not everyone notices, or is as ready to step into the embarrassment (which is like stepping into a great wind), and tell me. But not Lindsey! In this way, Lindsey is like… my ears.

Let me explain. When it comes to writing, our ears are our best friends. They will never fail to tell us if we have-a-little-something-right-there, or if those jeans we've dressed our writing in are indeed inappropriate. We can trust them. They won't let our stories out of the house looking like that. Our eyes, on the other hand, well, they are just so busy! And they love us so much! They understand what we mean, they know that we don't want to have that spinach in our teeth, and they have a to-do list a mile long, so, they overlook mistakes and slips. Our eyes listen to our intention. Our ears listen to what is actually on the page.

Jenelle recently wrote a great post about the importance of sound and rhythm to poetry. I'm not throwing down the blog gauntlet or anything but sound and rhythm are inherent to fiction and nonfiction as well, or should be (okay, so I'm throwing down a tiny gauntlet). I read all of my work aloud, including this, and including my novels past and future. I read until my voice is hoarse and my ears are happy. The more nuanced the phrasing, the greater the need for a particular beat, the harder I listen. This is the only way I can be sure that I've got it. Our busy eyes don't give two shakes about rhythm (or even missing words or misspellings), but our ears are… Lindsey Grant. The ones we can trust to let us know if we're ready to face the world.

Do you read your work aloud? What other ways do you check your work before you share it with others to see if it has any spinach in its teeth? Who is your Lindsey Grant?

– Tupelo