Writing Practice Prescription

Don’t you just love to go to your writing group and watch the nervous two-step that some of the participants demonstrate when they read? Perhaps you know the drill. The writer starts to read and then sees a mistake and grabs a pencil or pen to correct the writing. Two sentences later, the same thing happens. So it goes throughout the whole reading as audience members drift off into their own private thoughts leaving the writer to continue the good struggle.

If you don’t want to lose your listeners and demonstrate this two-step reading at your next reading, take two steps in advance:

1.    After you finish writing your piece, run the spelling checker.
2.    Listen to how your piece reads before attending your writing group.

Listening to your writing can be achieved by reading your prose out loud or asking someone else to read it out loud for you.

Mac OS X users, you can ask your computer to read to you by opening your “system preferences” and then following these directions:

System preferences → speech  → at very top, choose “text to speech” → then select the “system voice” bar just below to choose a voice → drop down to third check box and check “speak selected text when the key is pressed → to the right of that, click on “set key”–>when the box drops down, type in what you want to be a command. I use “Option + S” → click ok and then close “system preferences.” → Open a document and select the text that you want read  → Once the highlighting is in place, press the option and s key at the same time →  wait a few seconds and the reading should start.

Some place, some where–if you can find it–the Mac OS X manual should also tell you how to this. If you find it, please send a link so I can update this post.