Finishing V3.0 of the MG Fantasy? check
Reading entire manuscript out loud? check
Finding mistakes that I really should have caught earlier, including an oversaved blank chapter? check
Retyping blank chapter from printed copy (which is why I ALWAYS print out too)? check
Sending V3.1 to Agent? check
Collapsing? check
Finishing the proofing of Sex and Salmonella files for Kindle? check
Getting the corrections and cover sent to Ryan, whose class did the formatting? check
Leaving for a dentist appointment that involves needles and Novocaine? In a minute...
Slowly but surely, the list of thngs I must do before July 12 is getting shorter.
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5 comments:
So it's not crazy of me to print off current copies of whatever I'm writing! :-) I told my husband/IT staff that computers are evil...
In this case, it wasn't an evil computer problem, but a stupid writer mistake, but yes... a hard copy is always A Good Idea. I also e-mail every day's files to myself, so I can access them in case the house gets hit by a meteor...
Yikes! I'm exhausted just thinking about all that work.
I am a little dyslexic, and so see what I expect to see. This makes for really awful proof reading. It helps a lot to put it into a different format (i.e., printed.) Then my mistake finding quotient rises quit a bit. I am a lot better at finding other people's mistakes than mine. Good luck with all that proof reading. Tedium personified!
Joanna, I'm a terrible terrible proofreader. I've found that reading the manuscript out loud helps me to really see what's on the page (or screen). The newest wrinkle is to send the file to my Kindle, and let it read the thing out loud to me. I catch a lot of errors that way.
In nursing school multiple choice tests, I always had to read the questions out loud in my head. One word at a time. Otherwise, I often found myself answering the wrong question and not the one actually asked. Those pesky little "always," "never" and even the occasional "not" too often escaped my notice. I advised students to read their inane and often nonsensical essays out loud too, hoping that they would then realize how dumb they were. It is an excellent technique for realizing what you actually said. Thanks for the reminder. This a valuable tip that I had forgotten about.
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