A Case of Writer’s Eye

Writing is something I’ve always dabbled with but it wasn’t until my early twenties that I really put pen to paper and finished my first novel. But what I never anticipated was how this would ultimately change my reading experience forever! 

After the dreaded rewrite of my first novel (which was written so terribly that it needed countless go-throughs to get it right!) I learnt so much in the way of editing (in thanks part to my proof reader friends including one in the publishing business) that I caught what I now call ‘Writer’s Eye’.

Writer’s Eye is the way you look at a piece of writing. A reader, who may never have considered the work behind the words sees the story glowing off of the pages, letting themself be fully immersed and absorbed. 

A writer, however, sees the words, the grammar, the spelling, the way they might alter a sentence or add some description. 

And the mistakes! 

 

Would you believe how many mistakes I’ve spotted in books since I started writing? Only tiny, small meaningless things like missing words and punctuation. But I also find these things in my own novels! After ten, twenty even thirty re-reads I still find tiny errors! 

  
Our minds are on autocorrect!  – even when I’ve had several friends read my books their minds have also corrected the mistakes! 

Don’t get me wrong writer’s eye doesn’t ruin books for me it’s more that I now see the words on the page as well as the beautiful story they weave together. And that is, afterall, what books are for. 

How about you? Have you caught Writer’s Eye!?