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National Proofreading Day 2023
Today is National Proofreading Day. Fortunately, I have an app for that.
Maybe Third Or Even Fourth
I’m a writer first and an editor second… or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don’t claim to have all of them at my command. ~Lynn Abbey
RIght now, I’m a writer of code and that needs plenty of proofreading.
The main advantage to code over prose is that with the code, all you have to do is run it to see whether or not it works.
With writing, you need to read it, re-read it, have somebody else read it, hire a team of professional editors, make the changes and circle back to the re-reading. You don’t know if it really works until the reviews start coming in.
Be that as it may, I’d much rather be writing my stories.
Day jobs are great. Benefits are great. Regular income is great.
Those things don’t speak to an inner compulsion.
I have to create. I have to put stories together. I must.
Which makes the fact that I’m too busy and mentally drained to do it all the more irritating.
I’m tantalizingly close to being in a situation where I can do both.
I’m really close to being done some of the big things that hold up my literary progress.
Grr…
Ambience
Cozy Jazz Music & Bookstore Cafe Ambience with Relaxing Smooth Piano Jazz Music for Study, Sleeping
So, it’s time to sprint and rest. I’m pushing hard to get the brain-sucking things done so I can get on with my own endeavors.
It’s pretty difficult to shift gears, no matter how badly I actually want to.
This is where the whole work/life balance comes into play. I’ve been so caught up in the stuff I need to get done that I can’t get my brain out of that mode.
I’d very much like to have a distinct transition from work to life.
Ideally, I could just work until dinnertime and use that as a logical transition from work to my own to-do list.
Life isn’t ideal.
Assuming I’m not mentally drained by the time I get to dig into dinner, whatever energy I do have is often still magnetically drawn to the next day’s work.
If I get really lucky, I can call a hard break at dinnertime. In most cases, it’s because I’m too exhausted to do any more. In which case, I’m only capable of consuming someone else’s creativity.
Not sure how to reserve enough energy to be able to do that. Can’t really hold back at work or I’ll just get even farther behind than I already am.
Perils of Pantsing
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one. ~E. B. White
Be all that as it may, it still doesn’t solve the problem of being a pantser trying to do extremely long form content.
That scope of work requires a spec to write to. I suppose that’s how I have to look at it.
It has worked out alright for my Holiday Season Serial Romances so far.
Basically, I start with:
- A premise
- Some characters
- A template
- A deadline
…and I just go. Since the stories are all standalones, I only need to concern myself with the story at hand.
In the case of Merry 🔔 Bells, it came as a response to my wife’s response to Holly and Ivy. She wanted to see Ivy and Ian’s wedding, so that’s where Meredith and Toby met and off we go.
The original plan for A Song of Ice and Fire
When I look back at this one work project I’ve been toiling over, the need for a coherent spec is quite clear.
The only way a pantser can really deal with a big, multithreaded saga is to spec it out.
Natural plotters call this, plotting. Smug bastards.
Unfortunately, for pantsers, this spoils the fun. It cramps our style. It hinders the creative flow.
Like the Holiday Season Serial Romance template I use, I need to define some waypoints. To a certain extent, I already have.
I have some fixed points in my story, but they’re rather disjointed and pretty far apart. Getting from one to another results in trying too hard.
That can take a few problematic forms. Either I’m trying too hard to get to the next waypoint or I’m trying too hard to cram context in between the sparse points I’ve already developed.
I need a better spec so I can develop my waypoints into something that drives the plot forward without stifling my process.
Hmm, writing a spec for a long series. Makes me need to go back to bed…
That’s all for now. If you’re wondering what my proofreading app is, I subscribe to ProWritingAid. The toolset provides feedback on a variety of the elements of writing. It’s more than just spell-checking or grammar hints. If you’re a writer, you should look into it.