flitting on fiction

So … we talked about audibooks last time - and it seems that not only do most of us find them useful, but also that we all have some experience with reading books out loud.

I find reading out loud to be the best way to actually ~get~ what I am reading. Anything that I have actually read out loud, like Omeros, for example, tends to stick with me a lot longer than the stuff I just read. It is awfully time consuming though! 

Reading my own work out loud is also really helpful when it comes to editing, I find…. it allows me to find my errors, or the places that might look okay on the page but trip a reader up when read. I keep encouraging my students to read their essays out loud before they submit them; most of them don’t though, unfortunately.

It is also very useful when I’m writing fiction. I especially love doing readings for groups of people; quite often, when I do that, I will find myself changing things up on the fly …. after a reading, I go back and edit the work accordingly.

Thinking about reading out loud reminds me of how much I used to enjoy reading to my kids. I used to change things up on the fly then too … half the fun, for the kids, was in catching me changing the words.