Thank goodness for the discovery of a few awesome helpers along the way to boost my weak spot, and dark chocolate to ease the fried nerves.
My Sis found this one while working on a research paper. Thank you Sis!!! Ginger is useable online or you can download it onto your system. It has a spell and grammar check. The grammar check is a bit more detailed than the one that comes in Word. Ginger works directly from your document you don’t have to open and import into an external program. Best of all it’s free!
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| This is the diagnosis for HALF. |
This handy site lets you see where you need to do some tightening on your manuscripts. Your novels fitness depends on the amount of adverbs, adjectives.. etc… that the writing contains.
Copy pasting a few thousand words into this online tool lets you know where you need to do some tightening and shaving pounds off your book. If only it was that easy to that chocolate cake off my hips.
Hopefully with the aid of my handy author tool box and a bag of dark chocolate edits will soon be at an end and the final formatting can begin so Don’t Touch can get its tush on the virtual shelves.
1. Finish the re-edits on Don’t Touch
2. Start on e formatting of Don’t Touch
3. Start on preparations for materials for AIP on March 30th. (OMG That’s less than 30 days away!!!!)
4. Write one article
5. Take a breath, have a chocolate and try not to panic
For more details about the March 30th festival of books and art go here Authors in the Park.
How are your goals shaping up? Do you have any editing tricks or tips you like to use?
Thanks for those links, always great to know there is digital editing help out there! And I'm definitely going to take you up on your offer, just need to finish the editing/formatting (am a first timer, so left things a bit late :D).
ReplyDeleteLuckily grammar has always come fairly easy for me. Or so I thought until my editor marked my manuscript up from one end to the other. There were still some spots where I disagreed with her and I had the nerve to say, "hey, I really think that this is how it should be." Apparently, grammar isn't all black and white and my editor agreed to leave it the way I originally wrote it.
ReplyDeleteOn the dark side, however, I have given up chocolate for Lent. What was I thinking? I was thinking, it will get easier as the weeks drag on. Not. It is getting way harder to just not run to the store and buy a bag of Snickers. Arrgh.
Good luck with those goals. My goal right now is to just survive until Easter!
I enjoyed the Writer's Diet link... nd I'm happy to say that it believes my writing is incredibly "Lean". That said... I just finished taking a self-editing course run by Angela James (editor over at Carina Press), and I know that lean or not, my writing needs a LOT of work...
ReplyDeleteJust noting that because the grammar concerns you're worried about aren't the majority concerns. (Speaking of grammar, THAT sentence looks weird.)
Anyway... Mind if I share a few virtual chocolate bars with you and commiserate the number of things we need to keep our eyes on? ;-)
Awesome links, thanks! I have bookmarked them both. Good luck with the rest of the edits, they are the bane of my existence, too!
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check out Ginger. I've used editminion online to help me find those blasted adverbs and passive passages before. I'm still stuck in editing limbo as well. Good luck in meeting your goals!
ReplyDeleteWow! Thanks for linking those tools, they should definitely come in handy. I'm pretty good with grammar, but I still trip up here and there and my writing group falls upon these mangled sentences like rabid dogs (as good writing groups should) :)
ReplyDeleteYour AIP event sounds fun! Good luck getting everything edited and formatted :)
Would love it Eden :) I'm always open to any thing that improves the work :)
ReplyDeleteI am absolutely checking out Ginger! And, clearly, I need to buy chocolate, for I am editing too!
ReplyDeleteWhen you feel inspired (or rich, depending on your mood), you may want to look into that class... it's called Before You Hit Send. Good class--looks deceptively easy at first, then you realize how much she's packing into three weeks. And she's not even covering everything in depth (her words, not mine).
ReplyDeleteOne thing I would note from my own observations... Don't use Word (or Grammerly) as grammar checkers. It's too easy to lose a sense of voice but trying to follow the rules too well.
Of course, that ends up making the actual checking and fixing all that much harder, but from everything I've been reading from editors and readers, a strong voice means more than almost any number of technical errors.
Those tools sound awesome. So does the dark chocolate :-D
ReplyDelete