Okay I admit that I have not written anything for about a week. However, the work I did today was much more important than just sitting in my chair and typing. You see… I have an open invitation from Kirk Shaw an acquiring editor for Covenant to read my Dominion Day MS. Before I send it to him, I have one last very important edit to do.
I have already spoken about my tendency to write with passive voice. So… last night I sat and started to take out all the “was” in the book. It is a long task although not as hard as I imagined. I took out almost everyone and reworded a lot of my sentences. When I got the first chapter finished I sent it to a program called Virtual Editor found at:
www.veditor.net
After it processed my first chapter I used the edited feedback to also change the “has been, be” etc and sent it back. I was very happily surprised. My passive voice went from 11.9% to 2.1% the Flesch Kincaid reading level went from 4.5 to 5.8 and the average reading age went from 9.5 to 10.8. WOW just changing my passive voice helped my writing dramatically.
So now what? You say…
I am revamping my goals for each day. After editing one chapter my brain is pretty fried so my new goal is to edit 1-2 chapters using the V-editor, Give myself one grammar lesson a day, and write for a few hours but i will be writing just random things not working on intercession. I REALLY don’t want to go through EVERY MS i write and edit the passive voice out of it. I vow to learn to write active and that is what the rest of the month of April is going to be. Hopefully retraining my brain to think, speak and write active.
Sigh! It is worth it right?
3 comments:
It is definitely worth it.
You know, you're showing a lot of determination to make your writing as good as it can possibly be, and that is such a valuable thing. There are a lot of good writers out there who could be great if they would take the time to study their craft, but they don't. You're miles ahead of the game by being willing to study and revise -- you're going to be one who stays in touch with the current trends and knows how to ride them well.
I'd never heard of that virtual editor site. Thanks for posting about it.
Take heart! At least you didn't have to title this:
Revamping Brain, Goals Fry...
:^>W.
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