Talk to Me, Computer!

So, I've started the third draft of "The New Americans," the book that I'm co-authoring with my deceased father.

I know. There's a lot to unpack in that sentence. But, rather than tell the story yet again, I'm going to humbly suggest that you read some of my earlier posts on the topic or, better yet, check out the podcast that my wife, Helene, and I do called "Legacy: The Novel Writing Experience." For more info on that, check out www.twooldfolksdoingstuff.com.

This post isn't about the novel itself so much as my process for writing it.

This is the draft I intend to give to Helene. She's both my First Read and the toughest editor I've ever met. So, I've been doing my best to give her the cleanest book I possibly can. This is a big one. "The New Americans" currently weighs in at about 240,000 words, which is a lot, but not outside the ballpark for the type of story it is. But such a length presents certain challenges, with time being at the top of the list. My goal is to give her this story to read by the end of August. That's a tall order.

So, how do I move quickly through a book this size? Well, for this draft, I've elicited some AI help. I'm letting the computer read it to me.

It's a technique I can't recommend strongly enough. It's a line-editing tool rather than a copy-editing one. You don't want to go down this road until the story you're writing is past the point of major changes. This is for catching those little word choice errors and other typos that plague our novels like fleas on a dog. And it works!

Eighty percent of what I do is editing, which means reading and re-reading the same words until, frankly, I can no longer readily recognize my own mistakes. Fortunately, Word 365 has a wonderful feature that allows it to read whatever is in the current document. Yes, the voice is robotic and sometimes lacks inflection. But I'm not making an audio book here; I'm simply endeavoring to catch things with my ears that my eyes have missed. 

To activate it, you simply open your document in Word 365, go to the Review tab, and click "Read Aloud" on the Ribbon. This will open a little control box in the upper left, one which frankly gets in the way sometimes, but allows you to start and stop the reading easily. By default, there are three voices to choose from. All are native Microsoft and all have that tinny, robotic aspect I mentioned earlier. But they work for me.

However, if the tinny voice bothers you, you can try TextAloud. This is a third-party app that includes a nice Word 365 add-on and allows access to more "natural sounding" voices. It costs money, though and, from my experience, isn't as easy or efficient to use. If you'd like to try it out, visit nextup.com.

The trick, while I'm doing this, is to watch the screen. Word 365 moves word-by-word as it reads, making it easy to pick out discrepancies. Whenever I find one, which is often, I pause the reading, manually fix the problem, and then restart the reading at the beginning of the sentence to make sure I fixed it right. If it sounds tedious -- it is, but it's a powerful tool for "late stage" line editing.

Writing ain't easy. It takes a ton of time, a ton of work, and a ton of drive to make it happen. Anything that helps me produce the best product I can is a welcome addition to my author's toolbox. So, if you don't already do this, I suggest you give it a try!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a book to listen to...