{"id":3082,"date":"2006-09-17T00:50:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-17T05:50:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-03-27T21:32:34","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T02:32:34","slug":"preparing-to-listen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2006\/09\/17\/preparing-to-listen\/","title":{"rendered":"Preparing to Listen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/blogger\/3989\/528\/1600\/b2b0094.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/blogger\/3989\/528\/320\/b2b0094.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>Now, after an inital edit, followed by spelling and grammar checks, it is time for me to listen to the novel.  I&#8217;ve done this on all my works and it&#8217;s helped out quite a bit.  Other writers read the text aloud, and I&#8217;ve tried that.  But talking constantly for hours on end is something I never do.  I&#8217;m quiet.  As a result, I don&#8217;t have the voice for extended reading.  (Does this sound like rationalization to you?  Me too.)<\/p>\n<p>What I have found that works for me is to run my manuscript through a program called <a href=\"http:\/\/books2burn.sourceforge.net\/\">books2burn<\/a>, which splits the text into chapters and then uses the Mac&#8217;s speak text function to create an audio file for each.  I then listen to each, while following along in the manuscript, changing the text whenever I hear something horrible.  It&#8217;s surprising how often that happens, even in edited and re-checked text.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.io.com\/~hmelton\/stories\/images\/Clip.mp3\">sample<\/a>, a little less than three minutes from the end of chapter 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now, after an inital edit, followed by spelling and grammar checks, it is time for me to listen to the novel. I&#8217;ve done this on all my works and it&#8217;s helped out quite a bit. Other writers read the text aloud, and I&#8217;ve tried that. But talking constantly for hours on end is something I&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2006\/09\/17\/preparing-to-listen\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Preparing to Listen<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,373,81],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-NI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3083,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082\/revisions\/3083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}