Polish your work

In a total non-writing related moment – I was looking at an online video tour of a house for sale. This house had almost everything I would want and is in my price range. However I was horrified after seeing the interior pictures. The house, which was obviously occupied when the photos were taken, was terribly cluttered and disorderly. I’m not talking about too much furniture or filled curio shelves – there were empty plastic shopping bags piled in a corner, dirty clothes on bedroom floors, excess dishware (hopefully clean) on kitchen counters and used towels flung over the shower door… the list goes on but it really turned me off. I don’t care about how the current residents live, well not a lot, but they didn’t even try to make a good impression on a potential buyer. And I have to wonder about a realtor who posted those pics on a website.

I began to think about an editor’s reaction at seeing messy, error-laden manuscripts cross their desks. Even if the story is great, if there is so much left to be done to ready the pages for publication, it will seriously deter an acceptance letter – maybe even to the point of rejection. And if the editor gets past the bad impression to read the story and likes it, it will be seriously undervalued as the editor factors in the costs of correction (such as hiring someone to edit it).

When you are writing you should (if you can) turn off your inner-editor – just write and get your words and your thoughts on paper. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or formatting, it’s all about the story. Let your characters live and tell their story through you while you allow yourself to be totally absorbed in the events unfolding on those pages. Enjoy the rush you’ll get when you finally reached the end.

And once you’ve typed those beautiful two words, “The End”, your book (or short story or poetry) is NOT ready to go. Now is the time to clean the clutter, throw away anything that does not need to be a part of the scene, dust the words with a spell check, polish the punctuation, and make order out of formatting (check a publisher’s submission guidelines for the preferred formatting style). When that manuscript sits on an editor/publisher’s desk or computer screen, you want and need for it to make a GREAT impression, so put the effort in to actually make it look finished.

As the author whose eye and mind will see what you MEANT to say, there are some steps you can take to successfully edit your work and make it show-ready. It’s good advice to put the manuscript down when you are finished and walk away from it for several days, but sometimes deadlines or your own impatience stymies that notion. But remember you have to switch hats from creative to pragmatic, it’s a roght-brain/left-brain adjustment. A good first step, if you are using a word processing program that offers it, is to run a regular spell check – but NEVER let it auto-correct, always look at the recommendations and approve or reject each manually; take the time to verify the word if you find you disagree with the computerized advice. Some programs also offer grammatical checks – same advice, approve everything manually.

Check for story continuity using a scrap paper and make notes of important events, character intros and significant problems/solves to make sure your story doesn’t jump around. Does your wording make sense? Start from the back of the manuscript and read a few paragraphs at a time to make sure you are saying “something” – by checking out of order you are tricking your brain into seeing what is really there. Finally read the manuscript from front to back again and decide if you still like it; this is the time to personally check for any remaining spelling or grammatical errors.

Now it is a matter of trust and asking for help. Choose a friend or two to read your manuscript and critique it; it would be great to have one check for spelling, punctuation and formatting and the other to tell you if they LIKED the story. Even a non-romance reader can be helpful for romance novels though, this could apply to any genre. A reader should be able to tell you if they felt the story was believable, if they felt absorbed, if anything jolted them from the action. It’s usually a good idea not to ask a beta-reader to re-write the pages, that is best left to a professional editor if needed. The finished work, by the time you submit it, should represent a POLISHED and attractive specimen of YOUR writing. It’s a “Put your best foot forward” kind of effort.

Writing Exercise: Choose the correct spelling in each sentence:

1) Don’t embarrass/ embaress/ embarass yourself
2) Time-out is a form of disciplyn/ disipline/ discipline.
3) Everybody followed the rythym/ rhythm/ rhythym of the song.
4) The truth is aparent/ apparent/ apparant.
5) Can you recommend/ reccommend/ recomend a good movie?
6) The thunder crashed and the lightening / lightning/ lighttning flashed.
7) It’s difficult to use the correct pronounciation/ pronounsiation/ pronunciation.
8) We disagree, but I don’t want an arguement/ argument/ argumint now.
9) He is scared to make a commitment/ comitment/ committment to her.
10) It was an inadvertant/ inadvertent/ inedvertent mistake..

Writing Prompt:  Make a list of ONE item from each room of your home that best exemplifies YOUR personality. Write a brief sentence explaining why or how each piece symbolizes you.

Challenge Assignment:  Annabelle moves into a new house alone, but after the first few nights by herself in that house she keeps hearing strange noises. She is convinced that there is SOMETHING in the attic. After a shot of whiskey to fortify her courage, she takes a flashlight to the attic stairs and slowly makes her way to the top… she was right.

Write a brief short story about WHAT Annabelle found in the attic. Use more SHOW than TELL.