Proofreading dilemma

bmadsen · Dec 27, 2011

Hey, gang! How have you been?

I got meself a dilemma

I was proofreading my amazingly cool soon to be bestseller greatest creation on earth (not) novel after six months of just placing it aside.

Turns out I can't understand half of what I wrote and scribbled on top of it.

Please indulge me in your opinions. Do I carry on halfway through as I am right now or do I start all over again?

Thanks.

underthecity · Dec 27, 2011

No digital copy?

And when you say "proofreading," then you've already revised and rewrote it. Now you're proofreading, looking for misplaced words, etc.

You probably remember the story well enough to go through the manuscript and write a plot outline and character list.

If it's as bad as you say, try a complete rewrite. Things couldn't get worse, right?

happywritermom · Dec 27, 2011

I assume these are editing notes?
If so, just keep going and then reread and rewrite again. Your fresh eyes are likely to see things a little differently this time around, so those old notes might not be as valuable as they seemed previously anyway.

Congratulations on having the self-control to put it down for six months!

kimberlycreates · Dec 27, 2011

I blogged about this very thing during NaNoWriMo if you want to read the long version. The short version: Keep your momentum moving forward. After you've written "The End" then you can go back and unravel the mess that came before.

bmadsen · Dec 27, 2011

Lol...well it has been hard to keep my hands away, so I decided to start another one (in my native tongue, Spanish). This is about the sixth or seventh revision, but there were still things I couldn't figure out (my handwriting is a seismograph on a Foo Fighters concert). I love the momentum I'm having right now so I chose not to stop.

Oh! By the way, I proofread and revise on print, find it easier

James D. Macdonald · Dec 28, 2011

Let me see:

You have a printout, and you have some hand-written notes on it, and you can't read your notes. Is that it?

Then ignore the notes. They can't be that important. Read the text now and make the changes you note now.

slicing_angel2003 · Dec 28, 2011

I agree it might be best to just start over with the process. Try to ignore the notes you made before. It will be easier all the way around.

Of course if you do have notes you can't quite make sense of that you want to know about you could try reading the scene they are wrote on top of. This always prompted me to remember my chicken scratch of short hand.

Proofreading dilemma

bmadsen

I hate mayo

underthecity

Finestkind

happywritermom

kimberlycreates

insert witty title here

bmadsen

I hate mayo

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle

slicing_angel2003