I'm a professional writer, that is, I write for a living, however meagre.

Now that NaNoWriMo is winding down, I thought I'd share a few things I've learned over the years.

I heartily recommend finding someone to edit your work, both for spelling and syntax -- the obvious candidates -- but also for the plot and development of the story itself. It's especially nice if one's editor feels free to offer helpful comments to make your story better. Just like one's own children, it's often quite difficult for a writer to see flaws in their masterpiece, but one fit of pique in response to well-meant criticism will dry up the well of would-be editors rather quickly. To put it bluntly, an editor is a writer's best friend, and a good one is like gold. They deserve little presents from time to time, and constant cultivation and affection, lest they abandon one to a well-deserved fate.

In the absence of an editor, or as a supplement to your own polishing *before* you send your pages off to be overseen, I've developed a number of tricks that I wish had been possible when I started writing.

I'll offer two or three simple ones here:

1. Spelling counts. A neat trick to make detecting errors simpler is to use an editor which detects many such errors and renders them in red. Alternatively, the Firefox browser can be used to edit directly on a web page using the plug-in feature to add a spelling dictionary and automatic spellchecking. Some other browsers have similar features, but Firefox seems the most accessible. It's free, and it works on both Macs and PCs. What's not to like?
Giving one's editor a manuscript riddled with obvious errors may tend to discourage them, as few of us like to spend our days correcting things that should have been taken care of by the author. The occasional mistake is fine, but anything more than a mistake or two per paragraph is unacceptable. If you know that you have trouble distinguishing between "your" are "you're," use your computer to search for each one and try replacing either (in your mind) with "you are." The same goes for all the shibboleths one accumulates as one grows up, whether mixing up "its" and "it's," spelling "building" as "bilding," or whatever. The very first time you receive an edited manuscript back from an editor, compare (using automated tools if possible) the original with the edited version. Make careful notes of every error, and resolve not to make that particular error again.

2. Commas count. The difference between "Hey, Rob, that man over there who's waving!" and "Hey, rob that man over there who's waving!" is precisely one comma and one capitalized word, and precisely the distinction between a simple exhortation to notice someone and conspiracy to incite a felony. Commas are always used in English to mark the vocative case, which is a fancy way of saying that you're addressing someone directly, rather than speaking about them. So "Oh my, Mom!" is addressed to one's mother, where "Oh, my Mom!" sounds rather more like the outcry of someone caught doing something naughty, and addressed to someone else, possibly one's partner in naughtiness. There is nothing that marks dialogue as amateurish so much as long runs of text with no commas. Punctuation in general is important, and a lack of, or too many, periods is irritating, but omitting the comma, which is the only marker left in English for the vocative case, is beyond the pale. If you don't like commas, please try speaking Latin, where they are optional for the most part.

3. Readability counts. I think it's unprofessional, in these modern days, not to use the screen reader software built into almost every operating system released during the last decade, often associated with an accessibility feature. On the Mac, the technology is called VoiceOver. On Windows Vista, roughly the same idea is called Narrator. On Windows XP, it's called Speech in the control panel. By listening to the computer speak your words, it's much easier to recognize many spelling errors, and to get some idea of how the story actually works as a narrative. You should also read your own story aloud. The natural pauses you make in speech are a very good hint about where *some* sort of punctuation ought to go, and speaking words aloud makes it easier to detect whether a particular speech is implausible or not.

Storytelling is primevally a spoken art form, narrated around campfires by our very distant ancestors. Literacy came very late in our history, and didn't affect the requirements of a good tale one iota. A writer's struggle to make his or her story *real* is still termed "finding one's voice," and it's hard to know what one's true voice sounds like without hearing it from time to time.

There's a fairly famous story (well, among writers) about a monk back in the Middle Ages when literacy was hard won, and usually mastered only as an adult. He complained in a letter to a friend that the chanting of his fellow monks was so loud at times that he couldn't read. The joke, of course, is that he had to sound out the words, because he'd not had the opportunity to learn sight-reading, and if he couldn't hear himself saying the sounds of the letters, just like they do on Sesame Street, he literally couldn't read.

The lesson for writers is to slow down. You can't write dialogue without speaking it aloud, and a typical writer will express the full range of emotions out loud (this is why writers often live in ivory towers -- not because they're snooty, but because they might be locked up as crazy people if overheard arguing violently with themselves) the better to capture the sound of a real conversation.

And speaking of dialog, while it's very nice stuff to have, the age of the epistolary novel is pretty much over, and even radio drama. We TV-watchers and movie-goers from birth like to be *shown* things nowadays.

Which would you prefer?

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A.

The nurse said, "Your father just died."

"Ohmigod!" I cried, "He was my hero!"

B.

The nurse came in, not the pretty one, but the sturdy woman who looked like she'd been born on a farm in Minnesota and had milked cows and mown hay until she went off to college and decided to be a nurse instead. Her shoulders usually looked like they were used carrying heavy loads, but they were sagging now. She looked toward me, but not directly at me, her mouth working its way toward speech, and then turned away as she blurted out, "Your father just died," and ran from the room.

I sat down on the cheap brown vinyl couch in the corner of the waiting room, staring at the door she'd fled through. The sounds of the hospital faded away as blood pooled in my limbs, and my posture sagged. I turned slightly to look out the window. There was a yellow bird flitting back and forth along a tree limb just outside, a willow warbler I think, and it was tearing apart a large grasshopper. And then the dam broke and I cried aloud, although there was no one else in the room, no audience other than the heedless bird, "Ohmigod! He was my hero!" and then buried my face in my hands.

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The more your story reads like a detailed description of a movie, the more most people will like it these days. And it will be easier to sell the TV rights later on.

Cheers...