An advantage to writing slow is that it gives me an opportunity to review what I've written and edit it. Editing in small chunks allows one to really focus in on little pieces and hone them.
Aspects of writing that a novice writer is probably unaware of include sentence structure, by which I don't mean the ability to write a grammatically correct sentence, but rather the way a sentence is structured to have the most impact. Subject first of verb first? In context, it does matter. I write in first person, so if I don't vary my sentence structure, almost every sentence would start with "I". How fun of a read would that be?
Too, every dialogue exchange can't consist of "blah blah blah," he said, then "blah blah blah," she replied. Did you ever participate in a conversation in which both people sat or stood stock-still and did nothing but talk? Everyone has gestures, conscious or unconscious, they use when speaking. Or one person might be in the midst of doing something else when the conversation erupts. I include movement in order to avoid the he said/she said scenario, plus those unspoken quirks can reveal something about the character; for example, if they're nervous or feeling guilty. "Rubbing the back of his neck, he replied..." Sentences must vary or else they read like a third grade essay.
Editing short passages also allows me to ponder word choice. Yes, I'm a big thesaurus user, not because I don't know a lot of words, but because often my mind won't conjure the word I want to use. Also, as I wrote in an earlier post, using the same noun more than once in a paragraph (or even in the same sentence!) reads as repetitive. Granted, I never did find an appropriate synonym for "mattress", but I restructured the sentence to avoid using it. A tricky part about utilizing a thesaurus is that your writing still has to sound like you. Don't simply substitute a word that screams, "I used a thesaurus!" It'll come across as pretentious.
If I'm in the midst of editing and I'm still not happy with a particular word choice, I highlight it and move on. The highlighting reminds me it's something I'll need to come back to.
One issue I haven't solved is inadvertent word repetition. I read my text three times yesterday before discovering I had typed, "in in". I think we've become blinded to those things, especially since when we're editing, we already know how the story goes, and our eyes skip past those types of errors. I shudder to think those may have found their way into published manuscripts, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Because this book is taking so long to write, it will most likely be my best edited work. Now if only the story comes out just as pristine.
An issue I still haven't found a solution to
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