Read it out

I'm editing Eyemind, my fifteen year old novel, again today.  I've grown a lot as a writer since I first created those words, and now I can see how clunky the writing is.  There are a lot of passive sentences that need rewording.

The best way to figure out whether your writing works is to read what you've written out loud. It will tell you if your dialogue works, and if your sentences flow. If you stumble over words when you're reading, those stumbles are the places where the text still needs work.  

The next stage is to be brave enough to read your work out to others and get feedback on it.  All writers needs feedback on their work, but choose your audience carefully.  If you have a good writer's circle in your area, join it and contribute to manuscript readings sessions.

Eventually you might outgrow the group. It's important that the feedback you get is from people working at same level of development as you.  Beginnner's comments are of limited use to me now, I need more detailed feedback.  I'm lucky that I'm part of Pentangle Press, with my good friends Carol Westron and Chris Hammacott.  We're all working at a high professional level, and I know that whatever comments they make about  my work I need to take note of.