A little update and some Tips and Tricks

Spell check

Still busy with rereading, rewriting and editing my book. Or at least I am trying to be real busy with editing my book. Sometimes I am actually a lot more busy with staring at the rain or making cute, little birds out of pieces of paper. Lol.

Anyways, today I’ve been rereading my work and improving the spell of some words.

Most of the little mistakes I make are easy to find. Type errors for example. But it becomes a lot more complicated when I stumble on words who you don’t use every day in writing. Especially the Dutch language with his exceptions and stuff!

So I ask my dear friend Google for advice. 🙂

If I can’t figure it out on my own, I call a friend who knows a lot about the Dutch language. With him and Google I can find most of my mistakes. But not all. Mostly because I over read them or think that the spell already is correct.

The most annoying part of the Dutch language is that they change the rules every four years! It almost like you’re not allowed to know all of the rules! So you really have to be up to date.

Then there is a difference between the writing language and the speaking language.

If you want your dialogs to be natural, you will have to use speaking languages every once in a while.

I still have a lot of work to do, but for now I am done! All the rules are floating through my head and I think it’s best if I stop before I’m going too meke mistaekes! 🙂

 Comic made with Bitstrips

Tips & tricks: Re reading.

Re reading your own work is a very important part of the writing process. But it can be very difficult to look at your own work closely. You will find a few tips just below.

• Re read your work after a while. If you just finished writing a story, it still lingers too much in your head. Put it away for a little while before re reading it.
• Re read your work like it’s a real book. Relax on your couch with a nice cup of tea. Read a printed version.
• Ask family and friends to co read with you. They can find mistakes or vagueness. Work with their notes.
• Read the story global at first. Pay attention to the story itself, the characters and the dialogs. Is everything clear? Is there enough action? Rewrite those things first before you re read again.
• This time, pay attention to the details. Your language, emotions of the characters, punctuation marks.
• Ask your co readers again and ask them to make notes. With these notes you can finish the rewriting.

Editing is a lot of work, but it will be worth it! Good luck!

Lots of love, Patty