By DeAnna Cameron //
Nobody’s perfect. We hear it all the time, and it certainly applies to writers, too. It’s why we have editors and why the good ones are worth their weight in gold.
But while we writers aren’t perfect (even writers who are also editors), it helps to know our weaknesses so we can work to overcome them. My weakness is missing words.
Although I can spot them in a hot second in someone else’s manuscript, I can skip right over them when reading my own words. It’s like my brain insists on seeing what I thought I wrote or what I meant to write instead of what’s actually there, especially if I’m reading fast.
The upside is that since I know missing words are my weakness, I work extra hard at finding them. Listening to the passages aloud helps (remember this column?) as does reading S-L-O-W-L-Y, and I’m always looking for new tricks and methods to add to my writing toolbox.
I’m also fortunate to have some great beta readers who help me, and when I hire editors, I ask them to be on the lookout, too.
How about you, what’s your writing weakness or blindspot? Also, feel free to share your strategy for overcoming it in the comments. Your advice could be the help a fellow author needs.
DEANNA CAMERON is the founder and managing director of O.C. Writers. She’s also a hybrid author currently writing YA dark fantasy as D.D. Croix and an occasional copy editor who’s never met an Oxford comma she didn’t like. Learn more at www.DDCroix.com.
One of my common errors, which I try to identify during editing, is the repetition of words.