Christopher Hitchens remarked that to be a good writer you need to be a good speaker. He was a great speaker that wrote some great stuff that I hold in high regard. I, however, am a social retard (and I use that word specifically for its accuracy in this instance). Nevertheless, as the anti-Bon Vivant, as a narcotized monk in public, I wholeheartedly agree with his statement. Good writing hits the brain the way good speaking does. It falls on the ears “as it should”.
I’m currently recording the audio book for “The Grifter’s Bible” and it is, honestly, an eye-opener. Speaking some of the sentences I wrote was painful. You have to know when to breathe and you have to know that you will need to breathe…constantly…for the length of what you’re writing. A 30-word sentence that works grammatically is still a huge pain in the ass to speak. And I have to admit: it drags the reading down.
And I think most of this is just first-book syndrome. I’m still figuring out how to do the things I want to do and how to do them best. I will be re-writing whatever portions of the book fall into this trap. At some point I expect to remove the book from print for a short-editing phase while the audiobook is posting. But it shouldn’t be too long.
I may never learn to be a good speaker but I can take the things I know to be true and apply them to my writing so that I may become a better writer. That’s about all I can hope for at this point.