Can you hear it? Take your hands off your keyboards for moment and listen … that’s the sound of thousands of writers muttering to themselves, “It is contest time again … contest time …” Think MBT Frasier. ACFW Genesis. And the hundreds of other writing contests sponsored by other writing groups and blogs. Writers are zeroing in on hooks. Heroines. Heroes. Villains. Dialogue. Storyworld. But today I’m fast-forwarding to that final draft, that last bit of polish and shine. (Don’t you wish it were possible?) When you run your editorial fingers through your manuscript one last time, do you even consider fine-tuning your mechanics? Most writing contests have a category rating your spelling, punctuation and grammar skills. And even if mechanics isn’t an actual category, submitting a contest entry without typos, […]
Read the RestTag Archives | Speical Tems Blog
Ignoring My Internal Editor
Fun. That’s what I told everyone: The 2010 MBT WriMo Celebration was going to be fun! And then I set my alarm for November 1, 2010. Bounded out of bed that morning before anyone else in the house was awake. Ran downstairs, ignoring the dogs whining for breakfast. Settled in front of my computer, ready to go. Because I had 50k words to write in 30 days. This was gonna be fun.And then the screaming started.Not me—Ed, as in my Internal Editor, started screaming.For every word I typed, he screamed a barrage of insults. “That’s an awful opening line!”“You need a bigger DELETE button!”“You should’ve stayed in bed! The dogs could write better than this!”Oh, yeah. This was some kind of fun.Writing that morning was a-g-o-n-y. There was only one […]
Read the Rest
