Woo-Hoo

Woo-Hoo!

There’s a certain feeling a writer gets when he or she finishes a book. Yes, it’s the old “Thank [insert deity] that that’s over with.” I just finished my read-through (out loud) of my novel “A Throne At Stake” (yes, I actually figured out a title for it). Which means I’ve read it four times in the past several weeks. I’m heartily sick of it. But, today, I sent it off to my proofer. Woo-hoo!

Actually, I’m quite happy with it. Why the ‘out loud’ read-through? It’s amazing the number of errors that you can catch that way. When simply reading, you tend to read groups of words together. If you read out loud, it doesn’t work that way. I found a ‘fer’ instead of ‘for’, and a ‘Lady Godiva’ instead of ‘Lady Galinia’. Why would I type ‘Lady Godiva’? And how did I miss it in my previous three reads?

Something else occurs when you read aloud. You find groups of words that are almost impossible to say. Reading them silently works okay, but saying them ties one’s tongue in knots. Should you leave that as is, or change it? After all, the work is made to be read – but not necessarily aloud. However, if you have a character saying a tongue-twister, it may behoove you to change it.

“A Throne At Stake” takes place in the “Steadfasting” universe – a medieval sort of place – and I use some archaic words and syntax. Strangely enough, I find that writing in this manner appeals to my poetic beginnings. Yes, I started ‘writing’ as a poet. And, (in my opinion, though perhaps not in those of my listeners) I became reasonably good at rhyme and metre. Reading “A Throne At Stake” aloud made me realize that I’d drifted back to those days to a certain extent. The words seem to flow more gracefully than they do in my Science Fiction, for example. And then I began to edit for that, sometimes changing a word to add a syllable to keep the rhythm, sometimes changing word order, and sometimes replacing one word with another of the same number of syllables where the stress falls on a different syllable.

I’m not sure whether anyone will notice this, (and some may find it annoying, who knows?) but I enjoyed that final read-through. Now, I just have to wait for my proofer to look it over, correct the errors that I failed to find, work up a cover, and publish it.

Yes, all that, and keep writing.

Still, that can wait for the morrow. Today I celebrate a moment of joy. ’Tis done – at least for the nonce. Woo-hoo!