DON'T TALK ABOUT IT---Drive the Flaw to the Surface for Great Fiction

Reblogged from Kristen Lamb's Blog:

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Creating a core story problem is essential for any kind of fiction. Dimensional characters should have an inner want, a desire. The story problem is what shoves them out of that comfort zone and dares the character to try and maybe even fail.

There is a great quote in David Corbett's The Art of Character:

One of Constantin Stanislavski's…

Read more… 975 more words

I am keeling over with the flu and a migraine, so I am going off on sick leave. In the meantime, here is another critical piece of the writing puzzle from Kristen Lamb. Cheers everyone and many thanks to Kristen for her inspirational blog posts.

Support An Author Month Task: Give Kindness

If you have never gotten around to it, please give one!

When someone inspires you, or if you see someone who is using their writing gift to help others, please take the time to thank them publicly by giving them this award (and the rules for passing it on.)

This award is open to anyone to use. You don’t have to receive it, in order to be able to give it. Please take the details and images off this page and use it to encourage another writer. The rules for passing it on are very simple:

1. You are welcome to give it out as many times as you like, but it is only to be given to a maximum of one person per blog post. If you wish to give multiple rewards, please space the blog posts by at least a week, so the sincerity is maintained.
2. Introduce the person; say how they encourage, help or inspire you; then link to their work and/or social media profiles. There may be a specific post you wish to link to which helped you. It’s up to you.
3. Please publicise your award post to Twitter or Google Plus using the hashtag #writtenkindness so that others can find and follow the award winners.

Get the Award Badge and Code

<div align="center"><a href="http://cateartios.wordpress.com/" title="Written Acts of Kindness Badge" target="_blank"><img src="http://virtual-desk.com.au/SmallBadgeWrittenActsofKindnessAwardby%20cateartios.jpg" alt="Written Acts of Kindness Badge" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Boxed code from “Grab My Button” Code Generator: http://www.mycoolrealm.com/sandbox/gbgen/

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This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.

Support An Author Month Task: Buy That Book!

You know you’ve been meaning to… this week, your love task is to go buy that writing friends book you’ve planned to, but didn’t get around to.

Last week, to put action behind my preaching, I got onto Amazon and bought several tantalising ebooks which are below. Click on the cover to buy the book.

Please, take the time to do the same.

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Leaving the Hall Light On: by Madeline Sharples

A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide charts the near-destruction of one middle-class family whose son committed suicide after a seven-year struggle with bipolar disorder. Madeline Sharples, author, poet and web journalist, goes deep into her own well of grief to describe her anger, frustration and guilt. She describes many attempts — some successful, some not — to have her son committed to hospital and to keep him on his medication. The book also charts her and her family’s redemption, how she considered suicide herself, and ultimately, her decision live and take care of herself as a woman, wife, mother and writer.

A note from the author: I encourage you to read my book if you have been touched by bipolar disorder or suicide. And even if you have not, my book will inspire you to survive your own tragedies. As author Jessica Bell says: Leaving the Hall Light On is “a remarkable book and it SHOULD be read.”

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Sailing Down the Moonbeam by Mary Gottschalk

With a destination loosely defined as the rest of the world, Mary and her husband Tom leave family, friends and successful careers for a multi-year sailing voyage. As the voyage takes her farther and farther from her traditional support systems, her world becomes more and more defined by forces outside her control. Mary’s travels through often uncharted island communities, provides a compelling metaphor for a journey of self-discovery.

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Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island by Sonia Marsh

What do you do when life in sunny Southern California starts to seem plastic, materialistic and just plain hellish? For Sonia and Duke Marsh, the answer was to sell their worldly goods and move to an unspoiled, simpler life with their three sons in Belize, Central America, a third-world country without all the comforts and distractions of life in the developed world. Sonia hopes the move will bring her shattered family back together. She feels her sons slipping away from her, and her overworked husband never has time for her or the boys. Instead, things begin to go wrong immediately. The home they initially rented isn’t available, so the family is forced to take up residence in a primitive, bug-infested shack. Duke’s telecommuting plans prove impractical because of unreliable Internet access, and he loses his job. Middle son Alec – always a conscientious, polite, tractable child – misses his friends and has trouble adjusting. As the days turn into months, Sonia finds herself questioning the family’s decision to move on a nearly daily basis. This is the story of one family’s search for paradise. In this memoir, Sonia chronicles a year of defeats, fears and setbacks – and also the ultimate triumph of seeing once-frayed family ties grow back stronger from shared challenges and misfortunes. For Sonia, paradise turned out not to be a place, but an appreciation of life’s simple pleasures – a close-knit family and three well-adjusted sons with a global outlook on life.

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Out of Sync by Belinda Nicoll

In 2001, when a couple leaves South Africa for a stay abroad, they land at JFK International Airport on September 11th, unprepared for the sight of smoke billowing from the Manhattan skyline or the horror of a second plane exploding into the North Tower. Over the next ten years, as their host country confronts fundamental change of its own, their marriage buckles under the strain of their disparate experiences. With the international economic crisis making it all but impossible for them to return to their country, they relocate from California to the North, the South, and the Midwest searching for a place they can call home. Against the backdrop of uncertainties in post-apartheid South Africa, Belinda Nicoll unfolds a contemporary and thought-provoking account of post-9/11 America’s tantalizing hopes and unexpected disappointments. Out of Sync is an insightful tale about marital endurance that promises to enthrall anyone, expatriate or not, who has ever felt at odds with themselves or the world.

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This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.

#atozchallenge Y is for 2Years2aBook [Infographic]

Reblogged from Hunter's Writing:

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2 Years to a Book. That’s what I realised I could accomplish – on top of my normal writing projects and goals during the year. For others who don’t have the luxury of so many free hours to write, as I do, the program also allows for a book draft completed during that first year.

Read more… 818 more words

When Hunter first put this post out, I shared this infographic on Twitter etc showing how to write a book in two years. The whole post is worth a proper reblog as there is so much gold in here! Thank you Hunter: particularly from someone who hates long term projects and likes things done and dusted. This is a good reminder to pace myself.

Plagiarism: Getting Out of Sticky Situations

This is a purchased iStock photo. Under NO circumstances may you re-use this image without buying it for yourself.

I don’t know how trouble got my contact details, but I’m finding it’s harder to get out of trouble, than it is to get off the Readers Digest mailing list!

Sharon won a free book of mine a few months ago and promised me a review, which she very kindly gave me. [Gratuitous self-promotion: read the review here.] She visits my blog and I love her posts, so when she asked me to review her book, of course I said yes. That’s how it starts. You do something nice for someone and it is, after all Support An Author Month…

I started reading her book on descriptions in writing, and as I am not a fiction writer, I had more lightbulb moments than an Oprah Fan Convention! It is an easy to absorb book for writers bristling with so many “oh yeah!” ideas I’ve never thought of… I read a few chapters, emailed and conned her into doing a guest post for me on a particular topic. Read a few more chapters and then went to do my usual thing, and start jotting down ideas for my own blog posts…

Whoa there Cate! You can’t do that! You can’t review someone’s book, then write your own posts on nearly every topic… Which would effectively mean I had lifted too much of her book content with my own spin. As much as I’d like to meet Sharon, I don’t want it to involve lawyers, or her standing on my doorstep wielding a mean looking rolling pin!

I had to email Sharon back and say, “I had to stop reading.” Thankfully, she took that as a compliment.

A few volumes which belong to my temptation shelf.

I read other books by writers and I take out the odd quote or concept and write about it. One very small part here and there, linked back to their work is fine. However, Sharon had done too good a job… the temptation was too much!

So what do you do when you read a novel or book which gets under your skin that effectively? Put it down and walk away quietly. Even if you don’t pick up a pen then, it goes into your subconscious and will revisit later. (I don’t usually use the word bristling, by the way. It’s in my head now, with “nose like a ski run.” I love that one! I want to use it. I have to, somewhere, somehow…)

You can return to that book later, but be a little more critical and be very, very aware when you are writing that it doesn’t creep in. I need a shelf of books which would be my red flag section. (Oh rats, flag… Um, sorry Sharon.) The most delectable, dangerous influencers would sit there ready to inspire, but to serve as a warning. The temptation shelf…

So please, save me from myself and get Sharon’s book. It is excellent. If you do that, I know I can’t write on those topics.

You can buy Sharon’s book here and follow her blog here. Below is from Amazon.

“Book Description: Turn Blah into Brilliant with this Jam-Packed Volume on Description

Sharon Lippincott’s delectable writing gives you the spoonful of sugar to help the description medicine go down. In this slim volume– forty-eight short lessons-you will be so busy learning to hang on to inspiration, color up your words, and breathe life into your writing, you won’t even realize you’ve also learned to ditch dummy subjects, clear out dead “would”, and apply tips for using dozens of other description power tools.In reading this book, writers in any genre will discover

• An expanded perspective on the nature of description
• The difference between active and passive description
• How nouns and verbs impact description
• The importance of using sensory description
• How to capture inspiring phrases for later reference
• Tips for taming your inner critic
• How to gain inspiration by reading like a writer

This book will change the way you think about description. Order your copy now and transform your stories into magic carpets that carry readers into your world.”

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This article / blog post is Copyright Cate Russell-Cole 2013. All rights are reserved Internationally. You may not reproduce it in any form, in part of whole, without Cate’s prior written permission. That includes usage in forms such as print, audio and digital imaging including pdf, jpg, png etc. A fee may be requested for re-using her work if it is for a commercial venture. Link sharing and Pinterest pins are most welcome as long as Cate is the attributed Author.

No images on this blog may be copied, captured, or altered for your own purpose without the consent of the originating owner.

Support an Author Month Task: Best Post Ever!

As part of Support an Author month, please visit a favourite blog; locate a post that inspired you and leave a comment saying, “This is my favourite post. Thank you!” Be sure to Tweet, Facebook or share it on G+ so the author knows you’ve spread the word. #bestpostever

You are also welcome to leave a link in the comments here and recommend a blog, if not a specific post.

Cheers everyone! Thanks for the positive response to this initiative. My favourites are all on my twitter feed if you want to check them out. There are awesome posts there for writers. I’ll keep adding through this week. https://twitter.com/cateartios

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This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.

Pay Yourself First

“Pay yourself first,” was the solid advice I was given with business book keeping: and face it, writing is a business, even if you work at it recreationally. If the IRS wants a share, it’s not necessarily a carefree hobby any longer…

It is not the size of my royalty cheques that keep me writing. Please, hold my hand while I tell you the story of banking my very first ever royalty cheque from the almighty Amazon. A Hallmark, Kodak, landmark moment! (Not quite…)

I was tired. I had another headache. I had my husband double-check the numbers on the stub to ensure Amazon got it right before I banked it. Then I had a frustrating twenty minute wait while a very young customer service representative with chipped nail polish, unkept hair and no sense of organisation, danced around to the tune on the piped music and ran from desk to desk, attempting to work out what to do with an international cheque. (Yes, professionalism is dead.)

The grand prize for this? 70% culled off my takings as I am in Australia, not the States; plus another 5% taken off by the United States Internal Revenue Service (though it was worth the four month fight with Amazon, or that would have been 30%); $7 lost in the exchange rate and the standard $15 international cheque lodgement fee. (I just checked my account and the National Australia Bank just slapped me with an additional fee for spending that time on their “very fine” premises rather than netbanking a physical cheque!) I looked at the receipt and saw how little of the amount I got to keep and wanted to cry. I make more money selling a handful of writing course CD-Roms, than I did from pushing 1500 books. I went to text my long-suffering husband for comfort… to find my phone battery had run out!

Made by Madame Purl, a great blog for craft lovers! http://madamepurl.com/2008/01/20/bunny-slippers/

Pay yourself first. Pay myself with what? If I made 5c an hour for all the work I had put into writing, editing, formatting and promoting those books, I’d still be solidly in the red. I know that the amount adds up over time and makes it worthwhile… but on a first cheque, which I should have been exited about, it stunk!

So how do you pay yourself first when the money isn’t there? You do it by placing value on what you do and how it makes you feel about yourself. This is one instance when looking for outside approval is not going to do anything to encourage you. You pay yourself in personal satisfaction. I wrote those books, which I thought I’d never have the time to do. Other work and lack of courage had always gotten in the way of becoming a published author. In overcoming those hurdles, I have achieved a dream.

When I look back, it has never been money or recognition that has motivated me to write. I started writing when I was all of nine and my sister bought me a diary. I have been hooked on getting my thoughts down ever since. These days, I just share it with other people. One day I will probably say “enough” to business and will exchange my keyboard for my bunny slippers and Star Trek re-runs. Even then, I will always find the time to write.

Writing has to be for me first. It has to be what I want to do. It has to be its own reward. Chasing financial success works for a very few, but being true to yourself works for all.

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This article / blog post is Copyright Cate Russell-Cole 2013. All rights are reserved Internationally. You may not reproduce it in any form, in part of whole, without Cate’s prior written permission. That includes usage in forms such as print, audio and digital imaging including pdf, jpg, png etc. A fee may be requested for re-using her work if it is for a commercial venture. Link sharing and Pinterest pins are most welcome as long as Cate is the attributed Author.

The Oy Vey keyboard image is Copyright Cate Russell-Cole 2013. The bunny slippers come from the stated blog owner. No images on this blog may be copied, captured, or altered for your own purpose without the consent of the originating owner.

Creating Multi-Dimensional Characters #2---Everybody Lies

Reblogged from Kristen Lamb's Blog:

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Monday, we started talking about ways to create multi-dimensional characters. It's tempting for us to create "perfect" protagonists and "pure evil" antagonists, but that's the stuff of cartoons, not great fiction. Every strength has an array of corresponding weaknesses, and when we understand these soft spots, generating conflict becomes easier. Understanding character arc becomes simpler. Plotting will fall into place with far less effort.

Read more… 1,366 more words

Part two of Kristen's excellent series.

We’re All in this Together: How to Support Other Writers

Update: Damian Trasler has taken up the Support an Author in May cause, has started a list on his Google + feed for anyone who wants to promote their book. Damian is a successful playwright who recently wrote a guest post for CommuniCATE. He’s worth following.

Following the feedback I’ve received from Sandra’s post on toxic critiques, I’d like to focus on unity within the writing community, and we are a community.

I’ve met many writers who stick together with their fellow wordsmiths. They generously take the time to ‘like,’ ‘plus one,’ share, recommend, comment, rate and mop up tears. More of us give than tear apart; that’s how it should be!

Please take a little extra time each week this month to support other writers. Ways you can do that include:

• Buying that friend’s book that you have always meant to buy, but never gotten around to.
• If you have read a free book, leave feedback and recommend the author. Never leave a giveaway or gift unrewarded.
• Use your powers for good! Resisting the urge to leave a scathing negative critique. Ok, their work wasn’t your style or done to your standard. Let it be. Move on: don’t destroy.
• Leave blog comments, likes, ratings and plus ones (Google Plus) where you can.

Expletives aside, the message is right, no matter what topic we’re on.

• Give a Written Act of Kindness Award (details are below.) You have no idea how much giving these awards has encouraged and blessed MY socks off! Make someone’s day.
• Sponsor an initiative such as ROW80 to encourage other writers.
• Send a struggling writer an e-card which encourages them.
• Join a Facebook or Google Plus group and give one post a day a positive comment.
• If you see a request for financial support on someone’s blog (when they are non-commercial and freely giving to other writers), even if you can just give a few dollars, please do. Some sites and blogs are expensive. They need help to run them.
• Pass this post on to spread the word. The logos on this post are available for everyone to use.

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The Written Acts of Kindness Award

When someone inspires you, or if you see someone who is using their writing gift to help others, please take the time to thank them publicly by giving them this award (and the rules for passing it on.)

This award is open to anyone to use. You don’t have to receive it, in order to be able to give it. Please take the details and images off this page and use it to encourage another writer. The rules for passing it on are very simple:

1. You are welcome to give it out as many times as you like, but it is only to be given to a maximum of one person per blog post. If you wish to give multiple rewards, please space the blog posts by at least a week, so the sincerity is maintained.
2. Introduce the person; say how they encourage, help or inspire you; then link to their work and/or social media profiles. There may be a specific post you wish to link to which helped you. It’s up to you.
3. Please publicise your award post to Twitter or Google Plus using the hashtag #writtenkindness so that others can find and follow the award winners.

Get the Award Badge and Code

<div align="center"><a href="http://cateartios.wordpress.com/" title="Written Acts of Kindness Badge" target="_blank"><img src="http://virtual-desk.com.au/SmallBadgeWrittenActsofKindnessAwardby%20cateartios.jpg" alt="Written Acts of Kindness Badge" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Boxed code from “Grab My Button” Code Generator: http://www.mycoolrealm.com/sandbox/gbgen/

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This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.

Ways to Create Multi-Dimensional Characters--Tip #1

Reblogged from Kristen Lamb's Blog:

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To give characters depth, we have to be people-watchers. Study people. Know thyself. I strongly recommend reading books on psychology as part of research. For instance, I read a lot of FBI books on profiling.

As writers, characters need some amount of consistency without being predictable. If there is some deviation from the profile, there must be a good reason WHY, other than we need a character to act a certain way to move our story forward.

Read more… 1,249 more words

Another awesome post from writing coach Kristen Lamb. This is a must read!

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As regular readers know, this blog passes on great resources for writers. Often I will reblog the very best content, as doing so gives the originating author and their blog more exposure. Their blog also receives the hits from my posts. Reblogs of CommuniCATE posts are always welcome (unless stated), as long as my Copyright remains in tact. Copyright of any reblogs strictly belongs to the originating author. Please, don't rip off their work!

You are welcome to use this reblog logo on your own blog to encourage sharing of your work.

Yes, You Can Write Upside Down!

Calling all Aussies… and Kiwis who enjoy a paddle across the pond. These gems are coming up Down Under in May.

Worldwide festivals can be found on my Twitter festival list https://twitter.com/cateartios/writer-s-festivals

Sydney Writer’s Festival, May 14-20

Purchased from http://www.iStockphoto.com. You cannot use this image for any reason without buying it yourself.

“Sydney Writers’ Festival is Australia’s largest annual celebration of literature and ideas. Each year, we present over 300 events (half of them for free) and attract attendances of around 80,000 in venues that stretch from the Festival hub at Walsh Bay to the Blue Mountains. For one week every May we bring together authors of the very best contemporary fiction and writers of cutting edge nonfiction, including some of the world’s leading public intellectuals, scientists and journalists. With the finest literary writing at our core, our programming is driven by the ideas and issues that animate all forms of writing.”

http://www.swf.org.au/ 

Twitter: @SydWritersFest

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The Emerging Writer’s Festival, May 23rd – June 2nd, Melbourne

This one is for writers and isn’t just reader based. “The Emerging Writers’ Festival is an independent arts organisation based in Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas. We exist in order to promote the interests of emerging writers – to improve their opportunities for professional development as well as their engagement with the broader public. Each year the Emerging Writers’ Festival brings writers, editors, publishers and literary performers together with the reading public for a festival that is fast becoming an essential part of Australia’s literary calendar.”

http://www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au/ewf-2013/ 

Twitter: @EmergingWriters

A to Z Blog Challenge #18

Reblogged from My Rite of Passage:

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RELATIONSHIPS: the sweetest side of marketing

So says Cate Russell-Cole, an experienced creativity teacher and author. She has been published in many local and Internet e-zines, magazines and newspapers; and she has researched, written and taught her own courses since 1990. Her most successful course to date is Write Your Life Story, which has a thriving community on Facebook.

Read more… 410 more words

While marketing has to sit near the top of my priorities, I often loathe it. It's a passionate love - hate relationship. However, it has a sweet side: the new friends, growth and serendipitous discoveries that promoting myself has tumbled me into. When Belinda invited me to write a guest post for her blog, My Rite of Passage, this is the topic I chose. So for those of you who are shy or battle with pushing your work forward, this post is especially for you.

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P.S. This is the other thing that makes marketing and interacting worthwhile. I was in Twitter working on promotion for a guest post on memoir writing on Kathy Pooler's blog, when I saw this share of my post: This is indeed not what the guest post was about at all... not even close! Hilarious moments like these make the boring slog worthwhile. Thank you Bodice Rippers for your generous share.

George RR Martin, Author of Game of Thrones

George Raymond Richard Martin is an American screenwriter and author of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is best known for A Song of Ice and Fire, his bestselling series of epic fantasy novels that HBO adapted for their dramatic pay-cable series Game of Thrones. Martin was selected by Time magazine as one of the “2011 Time 100″, a list of the “most influential people in the world.” Source.

You Don’t Have to be a Novelist: Exploring Other Forms of Writing, by Damian Trasler

When I was fourteen, I wanted to sit at a battered Olivetti, with my fedora perched on the back of my head, and rattle off gritty sci-fi novels of intergalactic adventure. Instead I would rattle off essays on the meaning of life, and novels based on the imagined future lives of my friends.

Lucky for me (and them,) all these things are either lost or filed into oblivion. Given the chance to stay home full time when my first daughter was born, I revived my writing ambition My daughter was unbelievably well-behaved, requiring very little hands-on care. We went for a walk every day, and she would sleep in her chair beside my desk, or sit on my lap when she got older. I sold my second short story to a magazine, and my very first non-fiction piece was picked up too. It was an unfair beginning, giving me a strange idea of how easy writing success could be.

From there I found it almost impossible to get into print again. I wrote and submitted dozens of short stories, shopping them around every feasible publication. I tried different genres, competitions, different forms… nothing worked. Luckily, I had picked up a job I could do from home, editing a magazine for R.A.F. families (since my wife was a serving officer at the time,) so I could still count myself a writer: I had to produce most of the content!

My break came when I was told to go out and meet people. I joined a Theatre Club and they were looking for a play to enter in a performance competition. They had heard I was a writer, and asked me to write a play for them. I had never written a play before, though I had spent some time in amateur dramatics in my youth. Since I was a writer having trouble getting a novel finished, I wrote a play about a writer having trouble getting a novel finished. We took the play on to the competition and won an award.

Shortly thereafter, an old friend asked if I could co-author a pantomime with him and a friend. He had found a new type of publisher who was willing to take on the script. This publisher existed only on the Internet, putting scripts up in a format that could be read onscreen, but not copied. Then customers could pay online and download the script immediately. I mentioned that I had an award winning play at home, plus a couple of other scripts I had written since then, and he agreed to host them too. Within fifteen minutes of my first script appearing on the site, it had sold to someone in America: the other side of the world!

From those beginnings, my writing partners and I have added many more scripts to our catalogue, and they sell well enough. More rewarding are the communications from groups all around the world, telling us of their successes, passing on press clippings and photographs of our plays and pantomimes. I have received emails from places I will never have the chance to visit, but they have performed my plays, recited my words and delighted audiences I can’t even imagine.

I am a writer now. Despite the half-dozen odd jobs I’ve taken on since those early days, writing is what I do. I don’t make the money of a JK Rowling, or an E.L. James. Although I believe that quality is vital, that you should strive to produce the very best work you can, there are other factors that influence success. One is chance, which you can’t manipulate. You can’t ensure that your manuscript is picked up by the right person on the day they’re ready for a story like yours. But you CAN do things to increase that likelihood : You can polish your manuscript until it’s as near perfect as possible. Check the submission guidelines to avoid falling at the first fence. Look for an agent to give your submission more appeal. Be open to other forms of writing: you don’t HAVE to be a novelist, you know!

Sometimes life takes you in a different direction. I say it’s worth hanging on and enjoying the ride.

Follow Damian

• Blog: http://www.dtrasler.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dtraslerwriting
• Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/113893474516410622032

Read Damian’s Work

• Coffee Time Tales  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0079OA19K
• Writing A Play : http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Play-Amateur-Stage-ebook/dp/B0071OUAOO
• Troubled Souls: Amazon US: http://amzn.to/TroubledSouls Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/TroubledSoulsUK

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This blog post is Copyright Damian Trasler 2013. All rights are reserved Internationally. You may not reproduce it in any form, in part of whole, without the author’s prior written permission. That includes usage in forms such as print, audio and digital imaging including pdf, jpg, png etc. A fee may be requested for re-use if it is for a commercial venture.

The Best Kept Editing Secret

In 2000 I published a memoir writing course. It has been revised four times and edited by three trained editors: two at University level. I have put countless hours of work into perfecting it, but guess what? If you read through, you will still find very small typos hidden in it like Easter Eggs. That drives me to screaming point!

It’s not just me. Since I’ve switched to e-books, I am finding frequent mistakes in books from best selling authors, distributed through traditional publishing houses. One mistake was of an unrelated sexual nature and the spell checker, or editor, should have easily picked it up. It looks like the editing monsters are tormenting more souls than mine!

So why does this happen? Let me tell you the secret. When I researched “Unleashing Your Creative Spirit,” I delved into theories on memory and how it functions. Your brain is the busiest organ in your body. It runs your internal organs, all your movements, your memory, computes stimuli from your five senses, logs time, drives your subconscious thinking processes and deals with what you are doing now: reading. At the same time, it makes sure you aren’t hot / cold / hungry / thirsty / tired / in pain, or about to be run over by a bus! It has to compute what is around you, plus predict what to expect next.

That is a massive workload to achieve all at once! So the brain, being smart, has brilliant means of conserving energy. It’s actually very eco-friendly, but that’s sometimes to a writer’s detriment.

Have you ever been to a friend’s place and said, “You’ve repainted,” just to have them look at you strangely and tell you they did if five years ago? Of course, it will be the home of that friend you visit fairly frequently. It’s a common faux pas. We all go to familiar places and say, “I never noticed that before.” It happens because in order to save the energy it takes to log all the details, your brain does a quick scan and just takes in what is the most important. For what it considers to be familiar or non-essential details, it relies on memory, or blocks stimuli out.

How does this work with editing? When you have read the same paragraph ten times, it becomes too familiar. The brain automatically decides that you don’t need to re-log all that, so mistakes go unnoticed. You’ve seen those emails where you can still read sentences, even though the letters in the middle of the words are mixed up? They work because a familiar pattern is identified and you auto-fill the rest.

So, how do we overcome this? Make your work look new! When I started blogging, I discovered that I would pick up mistakes in WordPress’ preview mode that I couldn’t see in the writing window. In preview, the font size differed and words were in different spots on the page. If you’re working in a word processor, you can try for the same effect by changing fonts, changing margin widths, altering text color, or opening the document in a totally different word processor.

The other lifesaver I use is to put my work aside, wait 48 hours then edit again. That gives my brain a chance to re-set.

So don’t beat yourself up over the occasional small typo. We all make them. Do everything you can to prevent the slip-ups from happening and remember: it’s all because you’re just too efficient!

News just to hand: starting March 1st there is a free initiative running named “National Novel Editing Month.” Your goal is 50 hours in March. Join here: http://www.test.nanoedmo.net/

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