Castle Walls Editing

Tag: writing

  • I Like the Sound of That: Reading Aloud for Writers and Editors

    I Like the Sound of That: Reading Aloud for Writers and Editors

    Reading a manuscript aloud or listening to it being read can help writers and editors identify errors of spelling, grammar, or tone that they might miss otherwise.

    If you want to give this a whirl, you can read the manuscript out loud yourself, have someone else read it to you, or use a text-to-speech (TTS) function such as that supplied with Word.

    Too Close to the Work

    Reading the same text over and over creates familiarity, and this causes you to stop seeing what is there and to see instead what you think is there. Even if a word is missing, because you know it should be there, and because you can see it in your mind, you can easily read right past the omission as if it were actually there.

    This is why fresh eyes on a document are always valuable.

    To battle familiarity, people will often walk away from a document for long enough that it becomes new again. They might change the font or read the text backwards—anything to help them see the document as though for the first time.

    Reading aloud is another useful tool for addressing the familiarity problem. Reading aloud helps with identifying

    • Portions of the manuscript that need to be reordered
    • Inelegant transitions
    • Missing words (prepositions are notorious for going missing or popping up where they shouldn’t)
    • Errors of spelling, punctuation, and grammar
    • Inappropriate tone

     

    Reading aloud is also fun. For me, it sparks memories of my mother reading to me, and reading to my children at bedtime was one of the chief joys of my life. I read them Tolkien and Lewis, Terry Pratchett and Clive Barker’s Abarat, too many wonderful works to list. Together we explored new worlds, and I miss that.

    My first editing gig involved reading aloud as part of a proofreading team for a patent law firm. Patent files weren’t allowed outside the office, so my reading partner and I would go into the firm to do our work.

    (We can also note here that for all its benefits, hearing something read aloud won’t help you distinguish between homophones like “allowed” and “aloud.”)

    At the patent firm, my partner would read from the patent file and I would follow along in the patent printed by the Patent and Trademark Office, and then I would flag any discrepancies for inclusion on an errata sheet. You might not consider chemical and electrical patents to be riveting reads, but it was a good gig.

    I also spent nearly fifteen years as an editor for an audiobook company, so audio has been a big part of my life.

    When copyediting, I usually read aloud during my final cleanup pass, and I find this helpful for refocusing on the work.

    I haven’t incorporated Word’s TTS function in my processes yet, but it is something I want to investigate for helping me ferret out errors, and authors will likely find it helpful as well when editing their work (not to mention that it’s always cool to hear your work read aloud).

    Microsoft provides instructions for using the TTS feature here.

    The program’s reading is a bit robotic, but it’s not as bad as you might think, and (in Word 2016, at least) you can choose from three voices: Microsoft David, Microsoft Zira, and Microsoft Mark. You can also change the speed of the audio from painfully slow to nearly impossible to keep up.

    Word highlights each word as it’s read, so you can decide to listen as you pace the room or do a follow-the-bouncing-ball-style read along.

    For all the heat Word takes—much of it understandable—the program does have a lot of powerful features. Is Word’s TTS function something you’ve played with?

    (As a side note, studies have indicated that reading aloud helps boost memory and retain information, though the effects of listening to text read aloud are not as great.)

     

    ABOUT JAMES GALLAGHER

    I’m a copyeditor and the owner of Castle Walls Editing. If you have a manuscript and need a copyeditor, contact me through this site or email me at James@castlewallsediting.com.

     

    References:

    Microsoft Corporation. “Use the Speak Text-to-Speech Feature to Read Text Aloud.” Accessed December 17, 2018.  https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-the-speak-text-to-speech-feature-to-read-text-aloud-459e7704-a76d-4fe2-ab48-189d6b83333c

    Railton, David. “Reading Aloud Boosts Memory.” Medical News Today. Accessed December 17, 2018. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320377.php

    Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Reading Aloud.” Accessed December 17, 2018. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/

  • Writing Sprints for NaNoWriMo and Beyond

    Writing Sprints for NaNoWriMo and Beyond

    National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is fast approaching, and many writers are biting their nails hoping they can find the time to pound out 50,000 words in November.

    “Not enough time” is a constant refrain among hopeful writers — and an understandable one. Day jobs, family, friends, chores, outside-of-work appointments, life(!) all come between writers and actual, honest-to-God, sitting-down-at-your-computer writing.

    But a piece of advice you’ll hear again and again from successful writers is that writers write. No one has the time, but if you really want to write, you’ll find the time. You’ll make the time.

    Sprints are one way you can do this.

    WHAT IS A SPRINT?

    If you’re familiar with the business world, you’ve probably heard about Agile and Scrum and Scrum sprints, or timeboxed activities that take place over a short time (usually a month) with a clear goal. Sprints help businesses stay on task, cope with change, and deliver better products.

    For our purposes, especially if words like deliverables and iterative processes put you to sleep, sprints are short bursts of a single, uninterrupted activity.

    You might sit down and write for half an hour, take a break, and then conduct another sprint. People also join group sprints through social media, the camaraderie adding further incentive to meet your writing goals.

    BENEFITS OF SPRINTS

    The following are ways sprints can help you during NaNoWriMo and beyond.

    You accomplish a short-term goal. Micro habits are small, achievable tasks you can do every day to give you a sense of accomplishment, which in turn increases your ability to tackle larger projects. Even making your bed in the morning lets you tick an item off your to-do list and feel better about the day’s challenges.

    Lack of confidence is a barrier writers struggle with. No one can write a novel. I mean, come on. It’s too big a task. Too daunting. But you can write for half an hour. You can pound out 500 words. And if you do this again and again, you’ve written a novel without being crushed under the enormity of mentally tackling the whole thing at once.

    You separate yourself from distractions. Writers are great procrastinators. Let’s face it: writing is hard. It requires discipline and facing our own fears. You can’t hide from yourself on the page.

    Writing is something many writers feel they were meant to do, something they feel is their calling, perhaps even the most important thing they’ll ever do. That’s a lot of pressure, and it’s easy to shy away from it. You can’t fail if you don’t try.

    But you also can’t succeed.

    Our world also presents us with more distractions than ever. (Is your Twitter feed calling?) Sprints make you block all that out, at least for the duration of the sprint. You don’t check email, Facebook, or Twitter. You don’t answer your phone. You ignore the kids. You do what you have to do.

    You instill discipline into your writing routine. Muscles develop day-by-day with exercise, and the more you exercise, the better shape you find yourself in. Your brain benefits from exercise too.

    The more writing sprints you run, the more you train your brain to jump quickly into writing mode.

    People who have trouble sleeping are told to make the bed a place for sleep only, so your mind associates it only with sleep and will therefore slip into sleep mode faster when you crawl under the sheets. Writing sprints help you do something similar when sitting down at your computer.

    You send a clear message to those around you. Has anyone ever struck up a conversation with you while you’re reading in a public place? I always feel like the person sees you reading and thinks, Oh, God, they’re reading. What a terrible fate! I better go rescue them! It’s infuriating.

    Family and friends can do the same thing while you’re writing. Hanging up your DO NOT DISTURB sign or doing whatever it takes to tell friends and family that you’re writing for the next hour (or half hour, or whatever the duration of your sprint is) helps create that space.

    Specifying a definitive amount of time also helps wall this time off, because it prevents the “as good a time as any” approach to interrupting that someone can take if there are no definitive boundaries around your time.

    WHAT ARE THE KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL SPRINT?

    You can do a few things to get the most out of your sprints.

    Prepare. The most important thing is to work steadily and productively through the sprint. If you sit down and write nothing, you haven’t made it out of the starting blocks.

    For NaNoWriMo, you can outline your novel ahead of time (but it’s almost November and the clock is ticking!). Another trick is always ending your writing session before the end of a scene, so in the next writing session you can pick right up where you left off.

    In your free moments (washing dishes, driving home from work, conducting brain surgery), think about what you’re going to write. This prevents you from having no idea where you’re going when you sit at the computer or take out your notebook and pen.

    Commit. The busiest time of the year at any gym is usually right after New Year’s. Everyone is packing the place and is committed to New Year’s resolutions to exercise more. But check out the same gym in mid February and count the tumbleweeds blowing by.

    You have to commit to your sprints and make them productive. With NaNoWriMo, it’s easy to start strong but end up jumping ship when fatigue sets in. So the depth of your commitment will be tried.

    NaNoWriMo provides great progress reports, and that “words per day to finish” feature can help or hurt your confidence. So try to come out of the gates quickly to keep that number as low as possible. And then use sprints to manage your one-day-at-a-time approach.

    Communicate. As we talked about above, those around you can both support and hinder your writing efforts, and many times this is well meaning or unintentional. Someone who doesn’t write may want to help but end up invading your mental space.

    So it’s important to set your time boundaries and enforce your do-not-disturb policy. And then be exceedingly kind to the people who enable your writing by watching your kids, giving you that space, or providing any of the other kindnesses and allowances loved ones make for this demanding endeavor.

    ARE EDITING SPRINTS GOOD OR BAD?

    I’ve seen more and more talk online about editing sprints, which follow the same concept. A fairly recent ACES: The Society for Editing chat even centered on this topic, and a lot of great editors extolled the virtues of editing sprints for tackling their work.

    I like the sentiment. It’s hard to argue that an uninterrupted period of activity is bad for editing. There’s no doubt that ignoring email or social media while editing is a good thing, but I also feel like this should go without saying.

    More than anything, though, I don’t like the word sprint associated with editing. With writing, it’s often important to get that first draft on the page at any cost. But editing needs to be slow and methodical — never a frantic, rushed activity.

    So while I think the idea of an editing sprint is a good one, I don’t like the word in this context, and I would prefer editors use it for admin tasks or some other activity that doesn’t require the slow, methodical mindset.

    When I worked at the audiobook company Recorded Books, we proofed thousands and thousands of audiobook covers. The covers came fast and furious, and there was always temptation to rush to handle the workload.

    So I put together a sheet of Editing Rules of the Road, with the first rule being to “Slow Down!” When it comes to editing, this is always good advice.

    ABOUT JAMES GALLAGHER

    ACES and EFA member James Gallagher is owner/editor at Castle Walls Editing. If you’re in need of copyediting, send a message through the contact form on this site or email James at James@castlewallsediting.com.

  • Book Pick: ‘Quack This Way’

    Book Pick: ‘Quack This Way’

    At one point in Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace & Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing (2013), Wallace suggests that usage dictionaries are perfect bathroom readers because the entries have the appeal of trivia, are brief, and connect with usages the reader will inevitably encounter soon thereafter.

    While Garner’s usage dictionary is one of my go-to references, I prefer to leave it at my desk, as it’s a hefty volume.

    But even so, Wallace’s observation is spot-on, and you can do worse than randomly selecting a page in Garner’s Modern English Usage and reading a few entries.

    A much slimmer volume, Quack This Way can be enjoyed in its entirety over a cup or two of coffee, though you’ll want to make a home on your bookshelf for this transcript of the filmed 2006 interview (Wallace’s last long interview).

    Packed with insights into language and writing, the book features highlight-worthy lines on nearly every page, no surprise considering Wallace’s reputation as one of the finest authors of his generation and Garner’s as one of the world’s premier lexicographers.

    “[T]he average person you’re writing for is an acute, sensitive, attentive, sophisticated reader who will appreciate adroitness, precision, economy, and clarity.” — David Foster Wallace

    In the introduction, Garner touches on the friendship between the two men, and it is here Wallace’s suicide, in 2008, is most immediate, especially when Garner relates the author’s habit of crossing out his name on the title page when signing his work.

    Garner handles these difficult passages well, providing insight into the men’s relationship and leaving the reader with a greater appreciation for the privilege of taking in this conversation.   

    The pages that follow feature the text and only the text of their interview, with Wallace’s speech preceded by a simple “DFW:” and Garner’s with “BAG:”.

    Garner engages, encourages, and steps back enough to let Wallace’s thoughts come to the fore, and Wallace, as Garner described him in the introduction, strikes the reader as “self-effacing, apologetic, and endearing.”

    In what is essentially a master class on writing and language, Garner and Wallace explore the following:

    • Learning to write well
    • The difference between expressive and communicative writing
    • Writing that mistakes complexity for intelligence
    • Vogue words
    • Structure (openings, middles, endings)
    • Passive voice, beginning sentences with conjunctions & buried verbs and nouns
    • Officialese and genteelisms

    In addition, readers are treated to mentions of writers whom Wallace admired (all good additions to your reading list) and Wallace’s thoughts on the importance of a writer’s “big trio”: dictionary, usage dictionary, and thesaurus.

    Quack This Way is a perfect single-sitting read, a welcome addition to your bookshelf, and a smart gift for anyone even marginally interested in language and writing.

     

  • 5 Tips for Winning NaNoWriMo

    5 Tips for Winning NaNoWriMo

    National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is almost upon us. I participated for the first time three years ago and now have three successful campaigns under my belt (meaning I’ve hit the 50,000-word mark each time).

    Brag much, James? I know, I know, but if I’m going to offer tips for the event I should at least let you know that I’ve done it successfully a number of times, right?

    Every writer is going to approach NaNoWriMo differently (hence all the talk about planners and pantsers), but here are five tips I think can help anyone:

    1. Get off to a fast start.
      I can’t emphasize enough the importance of coming strong out of the gate. During November, you need to write 1,667 words per day to hit the 50,000-word mark. Your NaNoWriMo stats page provides a number of different ways to track your progress, but perhaps none is more gut-clenching than the one that displays your words per day to finish.

      It’s this simple: Write more than 1,667 words per day and that number goes down. Write less and the number climbs. Fatigue and pressure mount as the month progresses. Seeing a lower words-per-day-to-finish count assures you that you can actually do it. Seeing the number rise might just have you fleeing the scene.
    2. Remember that anything that isn’t writing, isn’t writing.
      Twitter, Facebook and the NaNoWriMo forums are all great places to meet fellow NaNoWriMo participants, and doing so is a valuable part of the experience, but every second you’re not pounding out words is a second when your word count is languishing.

      It’s oh so tempting to commiserate with other writers about the challenge consuming you or to talk strategy or to discuss your work in progress, but, for my money, your best advice is this: Write now, talk later.
    3. Treat yourself.
      During this frantic month, you’ll have to balance writing with jobs, family, friends and all the other aspects of your life. You’ll feel the rush of knocking out words at a lightning pace, but you’ll also have moments when you’re not sure where your story is heading, and you’ll inevitably also experience the soul-shattering fear that you don’t have another word left in you.

      In the face of all this, every little incentive helps. Treat yourself to the little halo you get for donating to NaNoWriMo. It’s a little thing, but the halo and other accomplishment badges really do give you a boost.
    4. Make a cover.
      Participants who upload a cover for their novel in progress are much more likely to hit the 50,000-word mark. Doing so won’t magically add to your word count, and someone who creates (or has someone else create) a cover is probably more serious about the endeavor in the first place, but you can’t argue with the connection between having a cover and “winning” NaNoWriMo.

      Seeing that cover every time you go to your NaNoWriMo page adds legitimacy to what you’re doing. And if it’s an especially badass cover, it might even inspire your writing to new heights. I mean, how can you see a killer cover for your novel and not throw down the words to fulfill its promise?
    5. Keep your head in the game.
      I’ve found that my best writing is done away from the keyboard. By this I mean that you should use every spare moment of non-writing time to plan your work, so that when you sit down to write the words pour out of you. The last thing you want is to waste your writing time staring blankly at a page.

      Keep pen and paper handy or use your smartphone to type or record audio of story ideas. Be open to inspiration from every source and it will find its way into your work. These notes can be your to-do list, to be addressed in each writing session. My biggest anxiety during the event has been the fear that I’ll run out of story. Having a growing list of events to populate your novel is incredibly reassuring.

     

    I hope those tips are helpful, and if you’re priming yourself to make a run at winning NaNoWriMo this year, good luck and enjoy the experience.

    And if you find yourself in need of an editor in the months following the event, or anytime, look me up. I’d love to help you with your project!

  • Sorry, Darlings: Depression, Rejection, Revision and Publication

    When I was seventeen, my mother and sister were killed in a car accident. I’ve said this, almost word for word, to many people over the years, and saying it has always been more than a statement of events. It’s always been a self-aware explanation (at least in part) of who I am.

    But even with the impact (crash terms naturally enter my writing when I think about their deaths), I’ve never written explicitly about the accident (or, to me, THE ACCIDENT). That changed, however, with my story “Sorry, Sis” (which has been published over at Liquid Imagination).

    [I break down the story below, so if you’d like to read it without spoilers, now would be a good time.]

    Three Stories, One Ending

    I wrote “Sorry, Sis” nearly a year ago during a period of depression, which I’ve experienced to greater and lesser degrees for most of my life. I cried a lot while writing the story, and it’s as personal a tale as I’ve written. The mixture of sorrow, dark humor, and self-recrimination is very me.

    You might even say those are my calling cards.

    I wrote two other stories during this period. At some point I stepped back and recognized that all three ended with a type of suicide, and I thought (1) ending every story with a suicide would make me a bit of a one-trick pony and (2) I probably needed to stop “winging” my depression and address it seriously.

    I did address it, and I developed what I believe are helpful tools for moving forward. I find myself in a good place, with many wonderful people in my life. Still, I’ve been living in my skin for forty-six years, and I know a lot about myself, and I know depression can descend at any moment, without warning.

    Those tools are going to come in handy.

    Kill Your Darlings

    Most writers have been advised to “kill their darlings,” which, essentially, means that you should edit out writing that is too self-indulgent or is more important to you than to the story itself. As I went through the process of getting “Sorry, Sis” published, I had to take heed of this advice—no easy thing given the emotions invested in the story.

    When I wrote “Sorry, Sis” I employed what I thought was an interesting structure, one that I believed made sense for the story and also kept the reader off-balance.

    I was thinking of the story being published online. Knowing that an online audience can click away from your story at any moment, I thought that I could maintain that audience’s interest by giving readers a number of different looks.

    That was my hope, anyway.

    But hopes, like too many of us, oft die early deaths.

    In my first drafts, the story employed a three-part structure in which the first part, describing a childhood incident, was told in the third person. The second part, in which the main character reveals that he is being haunted by his dead sister, was told in the first person past tense, while the third part, which brings the story to its conclusion, was told in the first person present.

    I also employed lists in the story, and I was, quite frankly, in love with the structure. This is brilliant! I can’t wait for the raves to pour in!

    It turns out that reality is less kind than a writer’s initial impression of his own work.  

    Rejection Can Be a Good Thing

    Six submittals. Six rejections.

    Your stories are going to get rejected for all kinds of reasons. That’s part of the process, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to revise your story with each rejection.

    But it does provide you with an opportunity to revisit your work and to take a hard look at what’s working and what’s not.

    I’d already made some substantial revisions even before sending it out. In the earliest version, the character had lost both his mother and sister to a car accident. While that was true in my life, it was too much for the story to bear.

    So my mother was expelled from the tale.

    Sorry, Mom.

    The more substantial structural revisions came after comments from one of the editors who rejected the work. (While having your story accepted for publication is the ultimate goal, receiving helpful comments is a pretty damn good thing too.)

    The editor’s critique made me realize something I already knew: the first person voice was, by far, the strongest part of the story.

    So I also jettisoned the opening third person passage, and the story was immediately stronger for it.

    A common criticism of fledgling (and not-so-fledgling) writers is that they don’t know where to begin their stories. An editor might look at a story and determine that the real beginning is actually three pages in.

    That was certainly the case here.

    When you’ve put your heart into your work, it isn’t easy to step back, approach it again, tear it apart, and reassemble it. But that’s art, and you have to be merciless.

    Kill your darlings.

    All’s Well That Ends Well

    So the story was published, and in the introduction to the issue editor Edwin Riddell called it “a creepy cracker if ever there was one, with some great writing, searing truth, and insight into little-explored aspects of the duality of our motives and actions.”

    Kind words.

    Words that made me proud and made me happy I wasn’t too proud to heed a professional’s advice and kill my story for the sake of my story.

    I hope my mother and sister would have been proud as well.

    [twitter-follow screen_name=’CastleWallsEdit’]

  • If the Story Is Good Enough, No One Will Care About a Few Typos, Right?

    You’ve just put the finishing touches on your masterpiece and cannot wait to share it with the world. Readers are going to shower you with positive reviews. You just have to get your story out there. There’s no reason to wait another second, right?

    It’s easier than ever to self-publish your work, and we’re farther and farther from the days when the vanity press was viewed with near-universal disdain.

    When done right, self-publishing can be profitable—even, dare we say, respectable. Just look at the growing number of authors who have made it going the self-publishing route (E.L. James and Hugh Howey are two well-known examples).

    The tools available to self-publishers also make it possible to create beautiful books with relative ease—books with your name on them! How can you resist?

    The temptation is almost too much for any writer, one of whose ultimate goals is, of course, to send a written work out into the world. But the ease with which writers can now publish their works can be a trap.

    Remember, once you send something into the world, you can’t pull it back, and that first impression can turn off a reader for life. Sure, you can reload a cleaner version, but by then a significant amount of damage may already be done to your reputation.

    The Delusion

    If you think self-publishing is a good fit for your goals, then there’s every reason to pursue it. But it’s a cruel world out there, and you should make every effort to give your work its best chance for survival.

    When we want something badly enough, we are extremely adept at picturing our desired outcome, often turning a blind eye to harder realities. This can lead to rushing out a work before you’ve helped it achieve its best form.

    Think about how fragile your feelings are in regard to something you’ve written, and then think about what lurks online. Have you been on the internet lately? Can’t you hear readers sharpening their knives? Do you really want to let an audience, emboldened by anonymity, take potshots at one of your darlings?

    It’s not uncommon for hopeful writers to say to themselves, “But if it’s a good enough story, no one’s going to care about a few typos, right?”

    The truth is that the only people who don’t care about typos are the imaginary readers you create for your work.

     

    Eliminate Stumbling Blocks

    Some of the best writing advice you’ll ever hear is simply this: Don’t ever give your readers a reason to stop reading.

    Dense paragraphs at the beginning of a work might convince your readers that your story is simply too difficult to wade through. For this reason many writers suggest always throwing in dialogue on the first page.

    Packing too much information, too much world-building, into the beginning of your story can also give your readers a reason to stop reading, so a better approach might be to let your audience acclimate a little more slowly to your world.

    And whether you’d like to believe it or not, misspellings and grammatical errors are a huge reason to stop reading. Your audience will question your professionalism, and if readers have paid for your work, even if it’s only a few dollars, even if it’s only 99 cents, they are going to feel ripped off.

    Writers owe their readers, at a minimum, crisp, clear copy that contains none of the stumbling blocks a professional edit could have eliminated.

    Before sending your darling out into the world, ensure it’s edited properly, which means another set of eyes. The world’s best editors realize that no one can successfully edit his or her own work. Writers are simply too familiar with their text. So do the right thing and treat your darling to a good edit. You—and your story—deserve it.