Do you see the new badge in the upper left hand corner for the 2010 Pikes Peak Writers Conference?  Do me a huge favor and click through (you only have to do it once).  The PPW is counting unique IPs and will list the top referring websites on their own site as well as at the Conference itself.  Heck, if you really love me, you could click through from multiple computers!  Either way, it's one click that opens a new tab, and it helps me out, so thanks in advance!

I met Gale Martin online a couple of years back via mutual connections through blogging.  She actually let me read and critique her Chick Lit novel, and believe it or not, I read it and found myself thoroughly invested in her characters.  For her to have interested a solid speculative fiction reader & writer like me, that says how good of a writer she is.  She got herself an agent with that book and is now hard at work on more.  She was gracious enough to write me an article for SGSS, so without further ado...

Polishing Your Manuscript

I just finished the first revision of my latest book. Yes, I was mired in add-ins and rewrites. But I also snuck-in the first several coats of polish, thanks to my ears and some user-friendly technology.

I keep the lastest copy of my manuscript and a hand-held digital recorder with me at all times. That way, whenever I have a few extra minutes, I read a scene into the recorder, play it back, and cringe.  The most instructive way to hear your writing is to have a friend read it to you—especially if they stumble over what you’ve written; such feedback is priceless. But, if like me, you don’t always have friends to expend for such a purpose, a recorder is the next best thing. You’ll immediately “see” where your prose is failing you by using your ears.

Another efficient way to polish is by using the “FIND” and “REPLACE” function on your word processor.  Two weeks ago, I attended a fine workshop conducted by Marlon James, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in fiction this year.  A fiery lecturer, he preached on the evils of –ly words, and why you need to purge them from your writing. If, like me, you’ve been writing for any length of time, you’ve heard this admonition before: NO WORDS ENDING IN -LY! I confess I still try to sneak them in.

Just one little –ly word here, another there. No one will notice, I say to myself as I add the word fervently on page ten—like no one’s going to notice it ON PAGE TEN! If you want a good laugh, put “ly” in the FIND box and see how many -ly words are screaming from the pages of your manuscript.

“FIND” and “REPLACE” is also excellent for eliminating every author’s word mannerisms. In every book I’ve written, I overuse just in early versions. In this manuscript, because my characters were better educated on the whole than in previous books, I also had about a million and a half “So’s” all over its pages. “So, what you’re saying is…,” one character would say. The problem was that almost every character began sentences with “So,” which I noticed right away using “FIND” and “REPLACE.” As much as I enjoyed The Lovely Bones, when Sebold trotted out her fourth hurriedly in the course of the book, it severed my connection to the story—a reaction antithetical to her purpose, I’m sure.

You can also use “FIND” and “REPLACE” to help ensure one character’s verbal mannerism mentioned on page six reappears in later bits of her dialogue. If you have a character who calls men “sugar,” use  “FIND” and “REPLACE”  to see if you’ve upheld her signature speech pattern.

Nothing replaces solid proofreading. There’s no E-Z pass to necessary revision. But certain tools like a $15 recorder and basic word processing functions can simplify the task while yielding a stronger work.

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A lifelong reader and former junior-high English teacher in Lancaster County, Gale Martin has written creatively for five years. In 2009, she received first-place in short fiction from Writers-Editors International Writing Competition and first place in the Scratch short fiction competition. She also received her first Pushcart Prize nomination this year for a short story published in Greensilk Journal. Her work has appeared online and in print in various publications such as The Christian Science Monitor, Sirens Magazine, Duck & Herring Company’s Pocket Field Guide, and The Giggle Water Review and in several anthologies.

Currently, she is completing a master in creative writing through Wilkes University and has just finished her third book, DEVILED BY DON. Presently, she is director of marketing and member relations at the S. Dale High Center for Family Business at Elizabethtown College. She and her husband Bill live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a setting that has richly informed her writing.

You can read her most recently published short story online here.