Last Week’s Goals
My blog posts made it out on schedule. Two more pieces came back from market – I am having difficulty finding a qualified market to send those two AND the one from the week before, so they sit her languishing. (“Installment Plan”, “Calling Down Lightning”, and “Rides from Strangers” are all dressed up and no place to go…)
My next scheduled release day is March 18th. I don’t know what I will be releasing, but since I no longer publish my flash fiction as standalone books, it won’t be one of the three stories I mentioned above that are currently in a market holding pattern since they’re all flash. As a matter of fact, most of the stories I haven’t published yet are flash, so I may need to do a collection next. Her Tom is due for one, so maybe that will be it.
I wrote on all seven days (a revision round on Swordsmaster #2 which is still in progress.) I made my daily quota on four days, and made my weekly quota with 4,351 words of fiction. Swordsmaster #2 is currently 102,490 words.
Listen To What You’ve Written
One of the great pieces of advice for writers is to read your story OUT LOUD. For most of us, that means hiding in a bunker somewhere so no one can hear what you’ve written.
That’s okay – just as long as YOU can hear it.
It’s far easier to overlook your errors when your eyes are just scanning the page. When you read out loud, you will catch many errors – like missing or repeated words. You will also experience whether your words flow smoothly off the tongue, or cause you to stumble. This is important, because – believe it or not – when your reader is reading your story to himself, he is sounding it out in his mind, and will also be tripped up by clumsy wording.
An online seminar I took that encouraged authors to produce their own audio books touted recording 
your stories as an even better way to proofread. That can be a little distracting, though. It can be unsettling to hear your own voice the way other s hear it, instead of being partially modified by vibrating through our own skulls. I am still practicing editing recordings in Audacity in preparation for doing my own audio books, and the main thing that is holding me back from recording more than the sample I’ve done of “B.I.T.” is that I don’t like the sound of the voice I’m hearing (and I used to ACT!)
(It’s even more intimidating after all the time I’ve spent listening to Kate Reading and Michael Kramer read The Wheel of Time.)
Regardless of how your voice sounds to you, the exercise still has value, so I will continue. Eventually I hope to meet my goal of putting out audio of half a dozen of my stories.
If only I could find a suitable bunker. Just saying…
Current Book Promotions
For information and links for my current promotions (including the FREE starter eBooks for my Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire series and my Detective Jimmy Delaney series), look HERE on my CURRENT BOOK PROMOTIONS page.
Reaching Out
William Mangieri’s writing has been published on Daily Science Fiction and The Arcanist. His ninety or so short stories and related collections can be found at several online retailers, including, but not limited to:
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