As is inevitable for a writer, the read rolls around each time a draft is completed.

Well, perhaps it isn’t inevitable.  I trust that some writers just dive straight into content edits when they finish a draft.  But there are those of us that prefer a simple read of their work, sans red pen, sans subjective and sometimes passionate tweaking and reorganizing of the organic, inspired chaos of a first draft.

I’ve recently done these types of removed, attempts-at-objectivity reads on the first two books in my twelve books series, The Ram and The Bull.  At first, it was hard to stick with the process.  I had the desire to correct typos and fix awkward syntax.  But after I got past the first few pages, I relaxed into seeing what was in front of me in a more holistic and optimistic way.  And while I could trot out a cliche or two to describe my vision when I do a read, I think it’s described best thus: get immersed in your world, not in your worldly trappings.  This way of reading runs parallel to a specific way of living.  As we become bogged down in the minutiae of daily living, most of which proves to be unimportant hell-stories created by our own subjective minds, we miss the stage we occupy, the world seen through a clear lens, an even-keel hand on the camera.

While reading The Ram and The Bull, I looked at the story I’d created, both the long-term arc of the entire series and the smaller, contained plot arcs that end with each book.  What I wanted to know was whether or not this plot I’d constructed and created was a complete world.  I didn’t want to know if the drapes were purple in my antagonist’s bedroom each time they showed up in text.  That and all the other peculiarities of the world can be changed with editing, not with a read.

Interestingly, as I read, and attempted to keep a dispassionate and removed view of my work, I felt intrigue and curiosity and fear.  I was pleased to realize those emotions were not stemming from an invested and attached reading of my own work, but from the plot and the world contained in the story, absent of my hand in creating it.  The protagonist made me worry for his safety.  The antagonist’s strange and secretive movements around Boise, Idaho made me anxious to see what chaos she was conspiring to sow.

Though some writers might think it impossible to read a work of their own creation and be affected by the world as if they are new to both its charms and weaknesses, I find that it is possible for me.  In fact, it’s necessary for me.  Because before I put my story on a butcher’s block, I like to see the slab of meat as a whole: the marbled fat, lean sinews, clotted blood and staunch bone.

Only then can I see where to trim.