writer « Robin Writes

Before you send off your manuscript to an agent or publisher, you must participate in editing, also known as “pulling out one’s hair,” “screaming and crying as you continually hit the wrong keys,” and “repeatedly beating your head against the desk while yelling obscenities.”

Many writers have given up at this point.

First, send your ms off to beta readers. Their job is to read the story—THE STORY. Not to edit, not to proofread, but to read. You know, like a book.

I’ve covered this in other posts, and in my marketing book. So, once you get comments back from them, you might make adjustments to the ms. Or not. Up to you.

Second, run MS Word spelling and grammar check. Yeah, I know, it’s nearly worthless. Some of the time. But you can make adjustments, like adding words to the dictionary (for example, I’ve edited books with Gaelic and Hebrew lines; thanks, Debbie!); or perhaps you have a character name with an odd spelling.

You can also set options in Word to keep things consistent, like ellipses and dashes and hyphens and spacing—as in between sentences. If you justify that right margin, the ms looks a lot cleaner. And more professional.

Third, go over that ms line by line, word by word. Say stuff aloud if you have to; some recommend reading the entire thing aloud, but I think that might be overkill. Pretend you’re a regular reader. If you notice something weird, so will your readers. Fix it.

You may notice that you repeat the same mistakes, over and over again. A reader will see them too. Or maybe you use the same word, over and over again. Yes, a reader will catch that too. If you think you’re doing that, do a simple “find” in Word and see how many times it comes up. You might be surprised. You might be embarrassed . . .

The fourth thing you could do is send it off to an editor. Please, please, make darn sure that editor is actually competent. I can’t tell you how many mss I get that are FULL of errors, basic mistakes like two spaces between sentences and periods outside quotation marks, the wrong words capitalized, italics used incorrectly, etc., etc.

Before you pay someone, make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. In order to accomplish this, of course, YOU have to know the mechanics of writing. Otherwise, you won’t see the problem.

The last thing to do is check the submission requirements and make sure your ms complies. It doesn’t matter if you think those recommendations are silly, the agent or publisher does not, I assure you. They are there for a reason, and you may not know the reason. Doesn’t matter. Make.Sure.It.Complies.

Writing is an art, a craft. You don’t just sit down and type something, not even 80K words of something. I’ve had people ask me why writing a book takes so long; they figure they can type 120 words a minute, so a book should only take a week or so, right?

And then you have to fix it, aka, self-editing.

It occurs to me that many, many people are in the process of writing a book. Now, I’ve said repeatedly that not everyone should do that, and I’ll stand by those words.

See, there are storytellers, and there are writers. Often, very often, people have both of those skills. Sometimes they don’t. You may have the ability to verbally tell an interesting, funny, or engaging story, but that doesn’t mean you have the ability to put it down on paper in the same interesting, funny, or engaging manner.

Sometimes, too, a person might tell a story and hear, “Oh, you should write a book!” That’s nice, but writing a book is a lot of work—and, here’s the catch, the average-sized novel runs around 80K words or even more. That’s a really long story to tell, so unless you can stretch out that 10-minute version, you might be in trouble if you try to turn it into an actual manuscript.

The third point in today’s lesson, boys and girls, is that you also have to master the mechanics of writing:

Use the Oxford comma.

Do not leave two spaces between sentences.

Do not even argue with me about these two things.

Do not capitalize random words.

Learn the difference between “Mom” and “my mom.”

For heaven’s sake, learn about comma usage.

Will you screw up? Sure, we all do. But a consistent “my Mom” or “the Minister” or “the Author wrote a Book” is going to irritate your readers.

And you know what else? If you do these things on social media posts or blogs or wherever, I’m NOT going to want to read anything you’ve written. I doubt I’m the only one . . .

So here’s the list, if you want to be a writer:

Learn your craft.

Practice every day.

Make sure you have enough things to say—original, not repetitious.

If you don’t know how to do or spell something, ask. Or Google.

And finally, a few nuggets of writerly wisdom:

It’s okay to only write when inspiration strikes.

It’s okay to make out a grocery list and include that in your daily word count.

It’s okay not to have a daily word count.

It’s okay to type, or use Dragon, or write longhand.

It’s okay to write a short story. Or a poem. Or a series. Or a sequel.

None of the things on this final list make you a writer—or not. All of these things are highly individual, unique to you as a writer. It’s all the rest that makes you a writer—learning, mastering, telling an interesting story.