Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.
-Lewis Carroll-
I think I must be slightly odd in some ways because I am one of those rare writers who has never day-dreamt of book signings or book readings. Well, no, I have thought about book signing sessions but I must confess that I dread the idea of a book reading. Recently I ended up reading a couple of proofs of my book to a small audience and I spent days afterwards wondering whether I made any sense at all, whether I read the punctuation properly, whether I run out of breath or read too slowly or far too quickly. I am a solitary type by nature which, I guess, helps the writing process immensely but when I am cast out of the vacuum I inhabit, and when my writing is trailing along for the journey, I go through an out of body experience the sensation of which I am in absolutely no rush to recapture. And yet reading aloud is something that I always do when I am stuck while writing and something that you should do too if in doubt. When we read aloud awkward turns of phrase, repetitions, misuses and inaccuracies reverberate in such a manner that makes corrections a compulsion, not a drudgery. Today try and read your work aloud and see how it helps the editing process. It works a treat I am telling you...!
Choose a piece of work you haven't looked at for a while. Sit or stand in the room and read it aloud, at a constant pitch, trying to reach an imaginary listener sat across the room. Really read the words on the page, not the ones that your brain recalls, urging you to spit out the last recorded version of this writing. Repeat the exercise while imagining yourself in a lecture theatre, your voice reaching the person sat at the very back. Now go to your desk and tackle what your reading has identified as areas for improvement.
Comments