Final Edits

Hi there, you may have noticed two things. One, this is not a Newbie mistake. and two, I said final edits not edit, because just when you think you've got it as good as you can, oops there goes another typo...

So, here are some suggested ways to read through your final manuscript, and fyi, that's after you've had someone else read it and before you have someone else read it again.

1. Read it outloud. You won't believe how many mistakes you will find or sentences that just don't roll off the tongue. You will hear repeated words and see missing words. It's crazy really. I had my kids trapped in the car on a trip so I  was reading my book to them and had to keep stopping to fix stuff. I even read one of my books to my class of fifth graders and kept a pencil handy to mark where I had to go back and fix something.

2. Read it backwards. Not as in- sdarwkcab ti dear-  but read each line starting from the ending to the beginning. This keeps you from remembering in your head and not seeing with your eyes. By now you would have edited your book many, many times and your mind knows what it wants to say. Often your fingers don't type what they're supposed to. It also keeps you from getting involved in the story and forgetting that you are EDITING. I love my book and my characters and even though I was sick of the whole thing by the time I got done because I had read it over, and over, I still would forget that I was editing.

3. Search for words you may have over used. I used "headed" way too many times in one of my books, as in headed out, headed toward, headed for, headed in the direction of, and my brother/pre-editor pointed that out. My real editor took me to task for not capitalizing mom and dad when used as a name and I KNEW that they should have been.

Now all this is after you have read the manuscript through several times killing all the Newbie mistakes we've already talked about.

Sick of your book yet? You will be, and it's okay, because that means you've worked really hard to make it the best that it can be!