I expect that all writers are avid readers, I know that I am. Unfortunately, that does not make writers good editors. I, for one, am terrible at editing my own stories!

One way of editing that I have discovered which helps me find grammatical errors is to listen to my story being read to me.

I do most of my writing in Microsoft One Note because it is a cross platform tool which allows me to always have my story with me in the event of inspiration. No matter where I am, I can pull out my iPhone and write a scene or a sentence. I can get on my computer when I get home and work on the story some more.

This brings me to the point of this tip, LISTENING. This is another thing that I like about One Note, it has a feature called Immersive Reading, which will use Text-to-Speech to actually read what is written aloud. So far, I have never used this feature and NOT found something wrong with my writing!

It is amazing how easy it is to spot an incorrect word or turn of phrase when you hear it.

I personally think that I am such as a poor editor because I already know what I think I wrote, so when I read it, I'm more remembering what I wrote rather than reading what I wrote. Perhaps if I took some time between writing and editing, I would not have this problem, but who has that kind of patience?

One final note: Unfortunately, my website editor does not have a reading option so I likely have more than one bad word choice on the site. Please feel free to let me know if you find any at admin@DeniseArnault.com