Thursday, December 10, 2015

Thursday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts


By: Heather R. Todd

Without a heavy dose of manuscript editing, your book isn’t ready for prime time.

Congratulations! You are one of the thousands of writers from around the world who succeeded in the NaNoWriMo challenge.

Determined writers like you endured the arduous National Novel Writing Month in hopes of producing a story that has been begging to get out. As the month draws to close, you are now sitting back looking at 20, 30, maybe 50,000 words that make up your story.

Good job!

Before getting down to the nitty gritty of preparing your book for publishing, here are a few pointers to make sure that your first draft gets the most out of manuscript editing.

Spell Check

Go ahead and do a spell check if you haven’t already.

It is amazing how many words you think you know how to spell that you missed in your 5th grade spelling test. While the spell check program won’t catch everything, it catches a good portion. That makes your read through much easier.

Let your novel rest

You’ve just poured your heart out writing a book. By taking part in NaNoWriMo, you committed yourself fully to this manuscript for the past month. Rereading it right away may not be truly possible just yet, due to your “writer’s goggles.”

It takes time to get a new set of eyes on the first draft of a novel, and the only way to get that new set of editing eyes is to take a step back and give your brain time to disconnect.

Print it out

When you’re finally ready to start making your changes, grab a bottle of water and a new printer cartridge. Go ahead and print the document out. All of it.

Read it out loud

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To read the rest of the post, click here:

~*~

If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again:
Happy writing and running, Kathy 

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