A new game to play

12 August 2011

I've read in numerous places that a good way to proof read your work is to actually read it out aloud to yourself.  I know it works because on a lot of occasions I've read out letter over various things to my wife Jan - and have found a lot of mistakes in them.  So last night after watching Traffic Cops on BBC1  I went to try it out on The Mission.  It worked too!

 

I asked my mate Bill Howe in Sale, Manchester to proof read it for me and he sent it back with a lots of corrections that needed doing.  I asked Bill because I know I could trust him to do the job as well as he could without pulling and punches.  If something was wrong, Bill would tell me about it straight!  After Bill a friend of Jan's had go as well.  Pam Gadsby also picked up items that Bill had missed.  Even so, I still found a few things that both missed.  Other items I found were where I wasn't happy about how I had worded things.

 

So this system of reading out to yourself can work but one thing you need to watch out for is that you actually read what is on the screen in front of you and not how it should read.  Now, I'm a talkative chap at the best of times but last night I found that for some reason my throat got very dry.  So next time   shall make sure I have a glass of cold water beside me as I read to myself.  It's rather time intensive too.  I say there for nearly 90 minutes last night and I only did 38 pages of the book.  So allow plenty of time for it.

My short term memory isn't very good at times.  Most times Jan will ask a question and I will remember it; or she will ask me to buy something as I go into town and will remember that too without any trouble.  However when it comes to my writing I find that some of the names I've used slip my memory.  So what I have learned to do is to open a new Word doc and save it as, say MissionNames and I list all the names I use as I use them.  It's a useful idea that one!  But I've come across another small problem.  I seem to be running out of first names to use.  So later today I'm off down to town to try to buy a couple of books on boys and girls first names.  Family names are easy in that I can find them easy enough in the phone directly.

 

Now then, have you written something and then some later found that you need to change it as the story progresses?  Well, I have!   So now I open yet another Word Doc and save as say, MissionPageCount.  On this one I list the various items of action, like say - 'page 3; the first body.'  I also list the chapter numbers too cos that's yet another problem for me, remember which chapter I'm on.  There's fourth doc too in which I post anything that I have cut from the story just in case I decided to use it anyway.  I don't like deleting anything I have written.

One last item then.  How many copies do you save?  I have one on my PC hard drive, a second on the spare hard drive connected to the PC and a third one on a USB drive that goes in my pocket.  I shouldn't lose them all surely ;-)))

That's enough of my ramblings for today folks.