🔪Ginsu Drop: Voice Proof Your Novel
How I streamlined my proofing process and made it my fave part of publishing
In Leveraging AI through Health Challenges, I mentioned a voice proofing method that turned one of my biggest pain points into something I actually enjoy doing. I said I’d demo it soon.
This is the demo. And honestly? It’s the simplest thing I’ve built that made the biggest difference.
🎯 The Joys (?) and Pains of Proofing
If there’s one task we Indie Authors all share (and maybe even dread) is proofing our novels “one last time” before hitting publishing and making sure everything is in order. By this time, our brains are mush, our eyeballs hurt, and we just want to hit publish and get it over with already. We’re tired of looking at the damned books. We love them, but we’re ready to shove them out the door already (kind of like teenagers!)
If you’re working with AI in any way, shape, or form in your novel writing process, human proofing (which means YOU!) becomes doubly important. You have to make sure everything’s right before you unleash it on the public, or bad things happen. (Like slop labels and witch hunts and other crazy crap NO AUTHOR should have to put up with. But people can be ridiculous, so yeah.)
But Kim, proofing is just reading your own book. How hard can that be?
The reading isn’t hard. Reading your finished book is genuinely pleasant. What kills you is the repetition and fragmentation when you find problems. (As as high Maximizer, I always do.)
Over the years, I’ve tried all kinds of proofing methods, physical, virtual, you name it: print the manuscript out and redline it, keep it on the computer and do it there (my brain misses too much, everything becomes invisible), change programs, change computers, change screens... They all felt clunky and cumbersome.
Until now.
