The truth is it’s about symbiosis: teaching feeds my writing, and writing feeds my teaching.
I’m working with a young writer this spring, a senior who wants to write novels. It’s a one-on-one class. He’s absolutely driven, and our focus is on his work. But I am sharing some of my processes with him.
One is absolutely painful:
- Find your weak verbs and replace them.
CTL + F is useful for many things:
- How many times have I written “had been”? Yikes!
- Did I tell the reader that she wore RED glasses too many times?
- Lower case to start an independent clause after a colon?
- Can I shorten my sentences? Search for the word “and.”
As I’ve mentioned, I’m a stickler (did I just write “stickler”? Am I becoming an old curmudgeon?) about reading works aloud or having the rat on the wheel inside the computer (or whatever powers the thing) read it to you. On a Mac, this is OPT + ESC. On a PC, it’s Windows + ESC (there are other ways on a PC as well).
The benefits of hearing your work are many: you find clunkers, spelling errors (the rat will read whatever you write –– if your hands move like mine, “to the” becomes “tot he” often.), throw-away lines in dialogue, and cliffhangers that simply hang. You hear the pace of your scene. You hear the rhythm of the language. In short, you hear what you really wrote. Not what you think you wrote.
These are some places where old fashioned editing meets technological advancements for me. I’d love to hear how others are using technology.
The benefits of hearing your work are many: you find clunkers, spelling errors (the rat will read whatever you write –– if your hands move like mine, “to the” becomes “tot he” often.), throw-away lines in dialogue, and cliffhangers that simply hang. You hear the pace of your scene. You hear the rhythm of the language. In short, you hear what you really wrote. Not what you think you wrote.
These are some places where old fashioned editing meets technological advancements for me. I’d love to hear how others are using technology.
2 comments:
Great post, John. The curse of the passive voice stalks all of us.
Great post, John. The curse of the passive voice stalks all of us.
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