Ernest Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is garbage.” It’s important to put your story to paper, make sure you’ve delivered your message before you get all hung up on punctuation and grammar.
By all means, your finished product will need to be edited, but too often writers tend to interrupt the flow of their thoughts and sometimes even lose their purpose in the written word worrying about getting it right the first time. What is important, for a writer, is to write. There is always room to improve your product LATER, but it is hard to improve NOTHING. So write and DON’T worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, or word count – DO worry about ideas and words. Just express yourself. And remember, even Hemingway, considered to be one of The Greats, thought his first drafts needed serious improvements. Much of this post’s contents applies to both fiction and non-fiction writing.
Only when you finish writing your tale, front to back, is when you should worry about editing. Spelling is one of the easier fixes – if you use a built-in word processing spell check, do NOT let it correct words automatically, check the suggestions and manually accept or reject the changes. Sometimes the spell check will pick up on proper names and “correct” them to unrelated words (the worst of these was on a synagogue newsletter I was editing, the spell check changed a FAMILY’s name of Pincus to PENIS – yes, I did catch it before it went to print, whew!). If you are writing fiction and including dialogue, you may have used some poetic license in order to distinguish your character’s education, social standing or nationality, such as an occasional phonetic spelling of a phrase AS IT WOULD BE HEARD (i.e.: whaddya want – or – zee boat) and the spellchecker will automatically flag that; read more about the mechanics of writing dialogue in the next paragraph. And there are also times, possibly when writing an informative article about language, that you will purposely misspell a word to use as an example.
A quick note about dialogue: Conversation should seem natural and not stilted, therefore you would want the speech to “sound” the way your characters speak. A highly educated and upper-crust professor might speak with impeccable pronunciation and an extensive vocabulary; an adolescent from “the hood” might make use of slang jargon and localized speech patterns; if English is a second and recent language to an immigrant, he may have a thick accent or lack of familiarity with terminology; speech patterns may also be affected by physical conditions such as drunkenness, accidents involving the mouth or teeth, or speech disorders like stuttering or lisps. It’s okay when writing dialogue to include a HINT of the characterization, but do not get mired in a constant barrage of specialized inflections; it could easily become too much of a distraction to your reader as they try to translate what the character is saying.
After a first run-through to correct spelling and glaring errors such as inconsistencies or omissions, put the manuscript down for at least a day. On the second day go through the manuscript again and look for spelling you might have missed the first time, run-on sentences, missing or misplaced punctuation, and ways you can tighten your writing. Hopefully you have a friend, at least one that is willing to read through your manuscript. While the second pair of eyes is a complete help in spotting typos, punctuation glitches and grammar mishaps, what is MOST important is that they can understand WHAT you were trying to say. If they return the manuscript to you with a totally puzzled expression, then you probably have to go back and make your message clearer.
Go through the manuscript looking for mistakes and tightening your words several times. Depending on your finances, you might want to hire a professional editor, but friends and laymen could be a lot of use as well. Unfortunately no matter how well your product is edited there will always be self-proclaimed “grammar-police” whose focus will be on punctuation rather than the story – don’t let them discourage you.
Writing Exercise: Place the words in the correct spots:
1) your, you’re, yore: _____ yearning for _____ past and wonder days of _____.
2) four, for, fore: _____ men stood on the _____ side of the hill _____ about five minutes.
3) there, they’re, their: _____ going _____ for _____ paychecks.
4) to, two, too: The _____ teens were _____ anxious _____ wait for the light to change.
5) pair, pear, pare: _____ the peel from the _____.
6) foul, fowl: They served a _____ smelling _____ for dinner.
7) its, it’s: _____ sad to see a new car without _____ bumpers.
8) grill, grille: The front _____ of the car is damaged. / Will you _____ the fish?
9) breathe, breath: Take a deep _____ and ______ slowly.
1) your, you’re, yore: _____ yearning for _____ past and wonder days of _____.
2) four, for, fore: _____ men stood on the _____ side of the hill _____ about five minutes.
3) there, they’re, their: _____ going _____ for _____ paychecks.
4) to, two, too: The _____ teens were _____ anxious _____ wait for the light to change.
5) pair, pear, pare: _____ the peel from the _____.
6) foul, fowl: They served a _____ smelling _____ for dinner.
7) its, it’s: _____ sad to see a new car without _____ bumpers.
8) grill, grille: The front _____ of the car is damaged. / Will you _____ the fish?
9) breathe, breath: Take a deep _____ and ______ slowly.
Writing Prompt: Everyone has those common misspellings or misplaced apostrophes that really bother them when they read – List five to ten glaring errors that always annoy you when you see them.
Challenge Assignment: Take any ten pages you’ve written – they can be from a manuscript (published or unpublished), old school assignment, personal letters, diary entries or grocery lists – and edit the heck out of them.
Writing exercise answers: 1) you’re, your, yore; 2) four, fore, for; 3) they’re, there, their; 4) two, too, to; 5) pare, pear; 6) foul, fowl; 7) it’s, its; 8) grille, grill; 9)breath, breathe. (hint: you’re, they’re, & it’s are contractions; grill & breathe are verbs; four, two & pair refer to amounts; your, their & its imply possession)
