Editing By Listening

The Oshkosh Area Writers Club emphasizes reading one's work aloud. Your ears are able to pick out missing words that your eyes miss. If you get winded reading a single sentence, that might be a sign you need to shorten it. If your tongue trips over a phrase, you might want to reconsider your word choices. Reading aloud also helps establish a rhythm or flow - especially important when writing poetry! 

Most likely you will pick out things as you read your work to yourself, and then again as you read it to the group. 

Don't have a group to be your audience? The latest version of Microsoft Word has an option to read your text aloud. If you do not have that option, there are apps and websites that will also convert text to speech. Natural Readers.com is one of those sites.  While it is not truly a natural voice, it is better than most computer generated voices, and has setting for type of voice and rate of speech.

~ T. Cannon