I could never write as amazingly as you do!

I prefer to write out a detailed outline to give me a direction before sitting down to type. I need that structure to keep me from drifting into a corner plot-wise. I re-work and re-work a chapter as I go and make changes over and over. I backtrack often and put things in place that were missing before. I couldn't tell you how many times before I send it off to my editor. I self-edit as much as I can, but I've discovered I'm much better at editing someone else's work! (Forgive me, MJ!)

So my beta/editor is invaluable to keep me on track and point out potential pratfalls. MJ is there to say, "No, no, no." and sometimes "Yes, yes, yes." All with the appropriate smilies attached. The benefit of extra eyes to polish your work can not be understated.

At some point I'd like to publish, but you can never learn enough. Even with all my successes, I still feel like an amateur at times. You can always get better and learn something new. That's the best part of the craft.

I'm working on my first serious story. I write a chapter on my iPad. Siri does his best to edit as I go along. Sometimes we argue about a word or phrase but I usually win. I then have Siri read the chapter aloud one paragraph at a time in his sexy British accent. I follow along making corrections. My brain corrects errors when I read so I miss them. When it's read back to me, I can hear the errors very clearly. Not sure what to do when I finish the story but... I've got six or seven chapters to write before I need to figure it out. I like the idea of beta readers but I think I will wait until my story is more complete. 

When I'm done with the story, I go through a series of re-reads with a single focus for each pass.  I don’t try to fix everything in one go.  I do these on hardcopy because it’s easiest for me to make notes on what needs to be fixed along the way.

Pass 1: Content.  Does the story make sense? Are the emotional arcs logical?  How did they end up with passengers in the backseat of that car I described as a sports coupe? Better fix that.  What else needs to be smoothed out?

Pass 2: Fact Check.  I circle every fact that I want to confirm.  These are usually small things that don’t impact the story itself but I want to get right.  Would that shuttle flight from D.C. land at JFK or LaGuardia?

Pass 3: Style.  This is my “read out loud” pass. I tick off any phrasing that sounds awkward and then go back through and see if I can come up with something better.  These are hardest for me to fix and sometimes I have to let them go and chalk it up to the fact that I’m not yet the writer I want to be.  But, I do noodle around with the parts I don’t like and sometimes I surprise myself and come up with something better. 

Pass 4: Grammar and punctuation.  I run it through an application called Grammarly first just to see what it has to say and then I print it out and mark it up with whatever I catch on my own. 

Pass 5:  Formatting and skimming for overall visual presentation.  This can get messed up on the upload sometimes, but I try to get it formatted reasonably well.

That’s it.  I’m done.  Post.

While not an author, I have beta'd for some, and one thing that comes to mind is timing.  One author had a woman saying she was six weeks pregnant, and then having the baby 11 months later.  They also had baseball Spring Training starting in April.  So, a little tweaking of the story before things went too far, and a more plausible timeline was created.

One other tip and this is something the author came up with - when writing, have an excel document open in the background to create a "Character bible".  When you create a character, or write a description, add them to the bible, with such details as name, relationship to primary characters and brief description.  That way 6 chapters later, you won't accidentally start calling a character's mom Susan, when her name was originally Sarah.

Has this organization put together a list of publishers (independent or not) or agents who welcome gay novels>

Thanks

NJDaddy