Latest Luck

 It's a lesser-known fact, but "writing" is a lot more work than anyone ever tells you. Holy cow! The "sit down and write a neat story" phase is the fun part. You get to use your imagination and tell a tale and dream of wild success. Aaaahhhhh...

Then reality rears its ugly head and you have to edit, revise, and polish. As every junior and senior high English teacher (and I suspect every other language, too) stresses, the first draft is just the starting point. I'm not so sure about 40 years ago, but I do appreciate that now.

I do know a few things now that I didn't before. I know that spellcheck and Grammarly (or whatever programs one uses) are not the last bit of editing. Heck, they're the first, since they'll catch the big things. They're a great tool, but there's a human factor.

Humans will notice that "alter" (as in I altered the length of my pants) is different than "altar" (as in the front of a church). Or that a cute little structure on a farm or in Holland is a windmill, but a device that spins and generates electricity is a turbine. No computer I know of will acknowledge my error and tell me about it.

Which brings me to one of my greatest fortunes in life- my "reading team." These are the incredibly nice and smart folks who read the first or second draft of my stories and tell me things I need to fix. All authors have them. There comes a point when I need new eyes on my work and these folks provide that for me.

They point out everything from technical details to my repeated use of the same word to telling me that I lost them with my wording. And so much more! Oh, like reminding me not to use sentence fragments. They are truly invaluable! I should add that they do, from time to time, tell me they liked something. I usually end up with a big smile on my face when that happens. 

All of the members of my "reading team" have similar traits. First, they're all readers. They read different books, but they're all into reading and know what makes a book good. Second, they're smarter than all get out. Each of them has different strengths, which I also adore. Having the team I do is the greatest bit of luck I've had in ages.

Third, and maybe most valuable of all, is that they don't pull punches very much. It's a good theory that one shouldn't use one's friends/family to give feedback on one's work. Simply, it's too easy for them to tell you you're great and it's perfect. They don't want to hurt your feelings and I get (and love) that. Unless I ask for them to be as honest as possible.

At this stage of my writing, my "reading team" are a few select friends and family who have no trouble telling me the truth. Usually they try to be delicate, but other times... "Do you really want them to talk like this?" or "Does this really matter?" are things they say. 

The pictures at the end are directly from my first draft. I love them all for their honesty and willingness to help me. My favorite is the first one. One reader thought I was being overdramatic, so I asked for a second opinion, who bluntly said she was correct. What I know is that when two of my readers (in this case it was more like five of them) have the same concern about something I've written, they're right. 

So I take their feedback and do with it what I will. I trust them all and value their opinions; that's why they got this job. Then I make their changes (or not) and polish my work. And polish some more. And some more. For now, I have some more work to do before sharing it with the next readers. Fingers crossed!