Do You Ever Feel Like?
- Jesska6029
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Do You Ever Feel Like?
Does anyone else struggle with this too? How do you know a piece of writing is complete?
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Gee, I wish I had a better answer!
- moderntimes
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- Jesska6029
- Posts: 544
- Joined: 28 Feb 2015, 09:21
- Favorite Book: The Harry Potter series
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- Latest Review: "Texaners: Eight Short Stories" by T. F. Rhoden
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Geez Louise, let me try again.
OK, for me, if I have a scene/book/portion of a book/etc., done, I know it because it "clicks." If I write a scene wrong, it nags at me until I change it. If you feel that "click," then you can move on (editing notwithstanding, as regards to typos and such). If it feels right, you should trust that.

- moderntimes
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I started a tight, critical word by word examination of the novel, ferreting out every typo and grammatical error. Thankfully I'm pretty literate so I don't really commit errors in grammar, such as mistaking "they're" for "their" and other junk high-school stuff. But I'm just a vulnerable as anyone else with good old typos, accidentally typing "McPherson" instead of "Macpherson" and things like that. Also omitting quotes or commas, typical errors.
Next I re-edited the logic of the mystery story, seeking out any false leads or clues that didn't make sense, composition errors. I also found places where I overused phrases. One of my weaknesses is to use "a bit" too much, like "He looked a bit like George Clooney" so I altered these to "somewhat" and other synonyms.
I also re-read the book aloud, especially the dialogues, to sound the conversations out, tweaking them so that they sounded realistic and natural, not contrived and forced. I pay special attention to dialogue because I think it's the lifeblood of any modern novel.
Finally I let the book sit while I started on the 4th novel and wrote some other things and then after 2 weeks, gave the novel a final re-read, catching those few spots that were slightly weak, pruning unnecessary words, tightening up the narrative and dialogue.
So yeah, now my book is ready. For a chance of pace, I downloaded it to my Kindle and re-read it once more, bedtime, so I'd get a different perspective on the text. I found zero things that I wanted to change!
Here's what I feel: If you don't meticulously pore through your book and ensure that it's the very best possible, how can you expect an agent or publisher or customer to buy it? You want the book to sing in the hands of the reader, and it's incumbent upon the author to ensure that the book is a perfect as it can be.
Nevertheless, there does come a day when you let it go.
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- moderntimes
- Posts: 2249
- Joined: 15 Mar 2014, 13:03
- Favorite Book: Ulysses by James Joyce
- Currently Reading: Grendel by John Gardner
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