Listen to Your Words

Editing Because I should have Last Year

And the actual point: Listening to Your Words

So, three years ago, I finished a manuscript. And then I typed it up (because I had handwritten it) and decided two things.

1. I was never going to write a manuscript in a journal again! Too much aftertyping!

2. This book was awesome! I was SO going to publish it!

Then, I let it sit a while. Almost a year later, I decided I was going to do the real edits, so I opened up the document again. I discovered something.

This book was horrible! I was SO never going to publish it!

And then I realized something else. I could fix it.

I went through at that point and fixed things here and there, but I only started something truly productive right before Camp NaNoWriMo last month. I am currently retyping the entire manuscript, looking at the old copy for reference. And I'm typing it into yWriter. Why? Because it has this nifty little button that looks like a play button. And when you click the button, it reads out loud do you!

Have you ever heard that you should have someone read your stories to you to hear if they're bad? Well, I'm not going to ask someone to read my novel out loud to me, so I used to read out loud to myself. I catch a lot that way, sure. But I didn't know how much I missed until I discovered this feature. I don't mean to be an add or anything. Honestly, copy and paste your novel, chapter by chapter, into google translate. It'll read out loud to you too. (In other languages. Bonus!)

Moral of my clearly unoutlined rant (as if I ever outline these)? Listen to your words, don't just write them.