Reading Aloud

[cathschaffstump]

Relevant Writer realization: Who has time to work on anything else but checking papers (English teacher) and writing (author)? Perhaps my best writerly advice to someone right now is this: If you want to go into education, and be a writer, choose a discipline that has multiple choice tests. You think you're doing yourself a favor by choosing a discipline near and dear to your hear. Choose again, and this time, choose more wisely. :D

Flippancy aside, while I wait for the coin of fate to flip, I've begun an outloud reading of the work. I tell my students constantly to read their papers out loud, and you know what? It is the best advice I can give them. Not only do you note things that are proofreading mistakes, but you also hear how your work will actually sound to others. Rhythm is important!

A more honest assessment of the work as I am reading it is surfacing, as opposed to just finished euphoria, or the doldrums of proofing. There are parts of it that shine, that are really, really good! And there are parts of it that have great potential. The first three chapters are very good and descriptive.

However, parts of it feel rushed to me, almost like the writer needs permission to linger in the margins, rather than relentlessly pushing the plot. I feel that lingering would be up to an editor's discretion.

It seems a lot like the kind of thing that does get published in YA, based on the amount of reading I've been doing. My work is no better or worse than most of the books I'm seeing. The main characters are compelling and interesting. So, bottom line: It's publishable. It can be improved. I hope it's marketable.

Meanwhile, I'm going to continue writing along my plan. Even though I'm not paid yet, I'm a writer, and I'll do what writers do: take some time to do some more polishing, and then get on to the next things.

Well, tonight is the night class, so I'd best do a couple of corrections I remembered while drifting off to sleep, and get down to some work at my other job.

Catherine

Comments

[kurtoons.livejournal.com]

Reading Aloud. I just got that advice the other day on Street Prophets, a blog community I belong to. I did a post there this weekend about the infamous passage in 1 Timothy (http://www.streetprophets.com/story/2007/9/23/144128/885) which is often used to justify the prohibition against women clergy. So this is a controversial passage to begin with. I knew that in commenting on it, I would have to tread carefully. I scanned over the post looking for typos. And, naturally, I missed one.

There's a verse in the passage where Paul says that "women will be saved through childbirth". I typed it as "women will be shaved through childbirth".

Needless to say, I got a few comments about that.

One of the kinder ones said: "Think of it as your Amish-like "mistake for god"--the error that shows you weren't trying, full of hubris, to be perfect...."

Yep I agree.........

[dracschick.livejournal.com]

I read my stuff out loud too.

good luck with your classes!

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

well...its' agood tip. but i make too many mistakes when simultaneously feeling the braille and reading it out loud. It sort of hampers things for some reason. it might be a sign that i shoudl make myself more used to itand get abeter flow. Fo now i'm using my speech software though. it's the nicest most natural voice i've heard in all those years of using this kind of software. there might be bette ones but this-one is fine for me. Sometimes i stop and check the actual narrative pattern byrepeating it in my head.
but it does help wit hdistancingy ourself from what you've written.