The latest revision is done! Now I need to reread the whole thing and make sure the changes work within the flow. I’m also applying some of the things Sol Stein is teaching me. Deleted about 150 “verys” last night and now I’m hunting down and slaying adverbs. “The adverb is the enemy of the verb.” – Mark Twain
Speaking of Mark Twain, his autobiography is due out this fall. It would make a nice birthday or Christmas present . . . (hint, hint). I found the below excerpt on proofreading that I need to keep in mind as I read my own manuscript. Twain is one of my heroes–in part because I don’t think he would like to be.
And then there is that other thing: when you think you are reading proof, whereas you are merely reading your own mind; your statement of the thing is full of holes and vacancies but you don’t know it, because you are filling them from your mind as you go along. Sometimes — but not often enough — the printer’s proof-reader saves you — and offends you — with this cold sign in the margin: and you search the passage and find that the insulter is right — it doesn’t say what you thought it did: the gas-fixtures are there, but you didn’t light the jets.
