First, you write your story. That’s easy for me to write, but not always so easy to do! 

You pour out your story into its terribly perfect imperfection (yes, I’m big on allowing your first draft to be messy), and once you’ve got that first draft down, you’re ready to nudge into the editing and proofreading stage.

I call this stage two of writing your story.

Personally I enjoy stage one much more, because I give myself permission to just write, to do the best I can, because I can tidy it up later at the proofreading stage. It’s the tidying up stage. Sigh. If you like to tidy, you’ll enjoy this part. 

For those who don’t like tidying so much, don’t let me put you off. This part’s important. 

The editing and proofreading stage is where you review what you’ve written and ask yourself 1. Do I need to move text around? And 2. Where are the mistakes?

Just in case you didn’t know: there will always be mistakes hiding in your text. 

I write books for people and even when we’ve been through editing and then proofreading it five times, we’ll still dig out the occasional error. And I have amazing proof readers.

So stage two is all about organising your content into the right order for you, and then picking through every single word and making sure they’re correct. 

A book needs at least two different sets of eyes over it, if not three or more. At the very least find a friend to proofread it for you. Or we offer that service too, so email me if you’d like to talk about it.

And once all your text is ready to be printed, it’s onto stage three: design.

More about that soon.

Charlotte x

PS –  I can see the New Year waving at me from here. Will 2024 be the year you write your memoir? I’m offering 30% off the price of my course Write Your Memoir through this November. Just use the coupon code: NOVEMBER. 

PPS For those of you who live in Wellington, I’m now offering a free memoir writing workshop there Saturday morning, 18 November. Details below. Click here to book in. 

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