Mumbling time again

I don’t know if other writers do this but when I have done as much editing as I can without going round and round in circles, I read my story out loud to myself. My husband calls it ‘mumbling in the study’… but I try not to mumble, I try to declaim – well, not exactly declaim, but read it in the normal way I would read something out loud to an audience.

As a self-publisher and self-editor it’s hard to get an objective view, or in this case ‘ear’, for my work. having worked on it every day, and had it in my head every hour of the day for so long, to try and detach it from my consciousness and become critical of every aspect of it is quite difficult. In a way, the practical correcting, of spellings, punctuation, grammar, even stylistic matters such as repetition, hackneyed phrases, trite descriptions (and in this story soppy endearments!) are manageable. Tracking the characters, checking the plot, keeping up with a time-scheme, may be a little tedious but they are straightforward. The really difficult thing is keeping at arm’s length from the feel of the book, the personality of the book; I don’t mean the characters although being strict with them and not letting them become silly or irritating, is vital, I mean the book as a whole thing, the book as complete.

Right! breakfast! Coffee! Mumble!