staand, Pixabay, Public Domain

Since my previous update, I’ve continued using the text-to-speech method of editing and I’m finding it more and more valuable.  It has shown up three typos so far, but its main use as before is in making it obvious where more work is needed.  In some places, I’ve completely redrafted a section because of it.

So far I’ve tacked the first fifteen chapters since the beginning of June, and that’s with days off doing other things.  So that is hugely faster than the previous edit which began last April.  I’ve decided to incorporate this method into my regular editing cycles which have to get a lot quicker.  I think if I concentrate on doing a clean up of the obvious stuff including continuity problems at the second draft, then do a text-to-speech read through for draft three, that will create the different mind set which I’ve found is highlighting many areas that need addressing which were not showing up on the radar before.  Perhaps, because different parts of the brain are used to process speech as opposed to written words, this has the serendipitous effect of making weaknesses obvious?

When I finish the current exercise, I’ll produce a rough ebook again and read that through to catch any typos that might have been introduced during this edit.  Hopefully the ‘big stuff’ will have all been dealt with this time through.

I’ve also blogged about my issues with the Windows version of Scrivener for producing compiled books, either for ebook or print.

So my goals for ROW80 and progress in red:

1. Play the novel through on the KK and make further amendments – first 15 chapters done
2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those –  No further progress, but I have documented the method and know what needs to be done mostly. I’ll get more practice when I finish the current play through because I am going to repeat the exercise to catch any typos that have been introduced by the current round of edits, which turn out to be a lot more substantial than I was expecting
   
3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the various editors previously identified as possible pro editors  to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.

And here are those nice ROW80 people and their updates: