Third Time

Pretty Flowers

Lord have mercy, do you know how many times I have been through my Charlie story trying to catch all the typos, tenses and etc?   More than I care to tell you.  I found I use was a lot and usually in the wrong place and not realizing the tense.   Hmm, I write like I talk and I have the dialect of my family that has been passed down through generations.  You would think those of us who have a degree from college wouldn't have this problem still, but we do.  So when we are thinking of a word in our head we write it down like it sounds when we say it.  WRONG,  our words sound past tense even though we don't mean them that way.  Yuck!   So it means I have to do a lot of correcting of my WIP. 

I now have a third reader reading my story to find the rest of the things I did not catch.  She has already found some typos.   Geez, I thought I had caught them all.  I am chomping at the bit wanting to get this book uploaded to Smashwords and Amazon, but I also want to put out a good product, soooo I am holding back on the reins, trying to be patience. 

While I am waiting I am working on another WIP.  I know your thinking why don't I slow down and catch the wrong usage of the words.  If I slowed down I would lose some of the story taking place in my mind.  I type quickly to keep up with the scene I am watching in my mind.  So I can't catch what I am doing wrong until later.

Then of course as the author of the piece when I read the story, it sounds find to me, without realizing as I read I said the word correctly in my head even though I have it spelled wrong or in the wrong tense.   I try to put some space between  The End  before I go back through the book, but it doesn't always work at catching all the little no nos.

I was reading Amy Bourret today about bad writing habits and I could relate to it.  I do find my self procrastining when I am writing.   But than again we are writers and we have our totally driven moments to were the house could burn down and we would still be writing.  We seem to be people of extremes, working flat out or finding excuses not too.  Oh well, we all walk to a different drum beat.

Susan McBride compared writing to having a baby.  I think she is right on track.  We all have the swollen ankles and sleepless nights from our WIP.  We worry about what people will think of our books and we tall everybody how our book (baby) is doing and some of us do take nine months or more to finish our books. 

K. B. Owen  has an interesting blog about Moriarty and has a link to another blog Bruce Rosen with more information.  Very interesting read.

Will that's all for today.

See you around the block.