The author Toni Morrison once famously said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” It’s good advice, and a corollary I would add to this is that you should not write a book that you don’t want to read. Ideally you should stick to writing books that you want to read over and over again, because the reality is that you likely will read your book a bunch of times.
Above is a picture of the book I’ve been reading over the past week and a half or so. As it happens, I also wrote the book. It doesn’t look especially pretty right now. In fact, it looks like a bunch of pieces of paper stuck in a three-ring binder, because that’s exactly what it is. If you’re a writer, here’s another piece of advice for you: invest in a laser printer.
Yes, you can read your books on your computer screen, and as it happens I have already read through this book once on my computer screen, but I find that reading a printed out page is a different experience. I see things I missed on the computer screen. I find more mistakes that need to be corrected.
What you can’t see in that picture above is that I have two different bookmarks going in my binder book. One bookmark (okay, it’s actually a red pen) is the spot where I currently am in reading through the project to find all the things that still need fixing. The other bookmark (technically it’s just a paperclip) is where I’m at in the story reading it out loud to Ron.
Just as reading a story on paper is different than reading it on the screen, reading aloud is different than reading silently. You will find mistakes that you somehow missed when reading silently. You’ll also pick up on clunky phrasing and things that just don’t sound right. Even if you don’t have a captive audience to read to, I highly recommend reading your manuscript out loud before you take the next steps with it.
And what are the next steps? Well, that all depends on your goals and plans for the book. For my project (Sorry to be vague. Technically it has a title, but that might just prove to be a working title, and I don’t want to confuse things in case the title changes before its eventual publication.) I’m aiming to to go the “traditional” publishing route with it. It’s just a little bit too weird to fit into a good genre niche, which I feel is ideal with self publishing. Of course, its weirdness might make it a tough sell on the traditional publishing front. So, we’ll see what happens. For me I’ll see if there’s an agent who wants to take this project on, that or maybe a small press who wants to take a chance on my quirky novel.
But first I’ll probably have to read it again, and since this is not my first rodeo I know that once the publishing process gets underway, there will be more read-throughs to come. Good thing I like this book!
— Alissa
Weekly Inspiration
What I’m Reading: An Untitled Work in Progress (see above)
What I’m Watching: Asteroid City
What I’m Listening to: “This Love” by Maroon 5
Find out more about my books at alissagrosso.com
Find out more about my digital art at alissacarin.com
My apologies for the typos and such this post is almost certainly riddled with.
Can't wait to read it.
Yes, pick characters and a setting that you want to spend a lot of time with. Because you will.