Friday, April 12, 2013

Zug Zug

Remember that little progress bar to the right? Take a peek at that sucker!

BAM! That's right. Revision 4 complete! It took considerably longer than it probably should have, but Real Life™ tends to not care what we have planned.

I put every spare moment I had into getting it done (hence the disgusting lack of blog updates). The problem being that spare moments weren't as plentiful as I'd hoped they would be. That said, in the interest of getting it done, I've learned a new skill.

I can now revise, out loud, in public places, with lots of distractions. Sure, people probably thought I was crazy, and it didn't go nearly as fast as when I hide in my writing cave, but it was time to revise I didn't have otherwise. I've now revised out loud in places such as hockey arenas, train stations, hotels, coffee shops, and book stores.

This revision was a game changer, and I have to say, I'm going to do an out loud pass on everything I write from here on out (yes, including this blog entry). It makes such a difference to the flow and clarity of the written words. There's something about engaging the speech and hearing centres of the brain that catches all the crud the eyes miss.

Take another look at that progress bar, see the numbers under it? That's 4,598 words shaved off the word count, all in the name of clarity. And it wasn't just 4,600 words dropped, it was closer to 7,000 words cut, then more words built on top.

During this process I won a 40 page critique from Kat Ellis on her blog. Her feedback was AMAZING, and I tried to take it into consideration throughout the rest of the draft. I can only hope I succeeded.

I've put the latest in my DropBox for my Alpha Readers, and e-mailed copies to 2 of my 3 current Critique Partners (Colten Hibbs, Rachel Russel, and Clara Mitchell). Now it's all over except for the terror... and feedback.

- Alex

2 comments:

  1. *cough cough* it's CLARE! :P

    I've still to do a read aloud revision. I started... got to page three then got bored. Credit to you for seeing it through.

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