Monday, November 2, 2009

Read like a reader, not like a writer....

Now that I write and edit and am going through this whole process with a professional editor....I am having an EXTREMELY hard time reading books and turning off the writer part of me. I see sentences written poorly (or at least I think they are written poorly. I see all the ways that it could be said better, clearer, smoother) or a grammar mistake (I gasp when I see those. Hello??? What is the purpose of a line editor if they don't catch stuff like that before it goes to print????) I see those no no words and adverbs that I spent months deleting and rewording in my own manuscript. Sometimes I get so distracted that I get lost and have a hard time concentrating on the story.

Then I have to tell myself to stop. I tell myself to chill out and just read. Read the story and lose myself in it...enjoy it....read it like a every other Jane out there.

Does anyone else have this problem?? How do you remedy it???

8 comments:

  1. Yes, I did this when I first started taking a writing course. :( It felt awful, and I was writing for children at the time, so even children's books I read to my kids, I would get frustrated with.

    I can't tell you the solution, except that I think I finally made the conscious decision to allow the mistakes I saw in others books free my writing. I tried to change the attitude from negative to positive. My rough drafts are now a little rougher-but they flow more easily from my imagination. And when I see mistakes in books, it makes me smile instead of cringe. (Unless it's a really bad, blatant grammatical error, those get me!)

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  2. I have this same problem! All I can do is say, "this novel made it, so mine can too", and try not to use those same no no's in my own writing.

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  3. Aubie that is so true...I say the same thing to myself!!!!

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  4. For a long time I had the same problem. Then, one day, I was somehow able to just read for pleasure again. For me, it really does feel like a switch. I can tell myself to just read and enjoy the book. If I think it's worth it, I'll go back later to analyze it for the writing. I'm not sure how I got to that place, though. It just sort of happened for me.

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  5. I have to fight against my writer brain, but if it's a good story, I can usually turn it off and just enjoy.

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  6. This was a huge problem for me when I was editing.I finally talked to a friend of mine about it...I was worried I'd never be able to read another book for enjoyment again. My thought, "Seriously? Is this the price I pay to be a writer?" Thank heavens it wasn't. The inned editor went away after I was finished editing. Thank Goodness!! I hope yours will too!

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  7. It seems once I'm past the begiining..the backstory...the slow parts, etc....I get into and I'm so into the story that I forget to analyze every sentence...every word like I do for my own writing. It's the beginning that's tough.

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  8. Still looking for the on/off switch to my Edi-dar.

    It's stuck ON.
    :)

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