Seeing the manuscript differently

In a cou­ple of days I will read my new book to a class of fifth graders. What do I do? I go through the book yet again. I bring the text up on my com­put­er. I change the font. I change the back­ground col­or. Why? I want to see the book in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent fashion. 

I read through the book. But I am not so much read­ing the book as I am hear­ing it. I make many small changes. But they are impor­tant, sub­tle things. Changes of tone. Of empha­sis. I catch rep­e­ti­tious words, phras­es, yes, mis­takes. Spelling. Gram­mar. I make cuts. Rule num­ber one: a book always needs to be tighter. It needs to dri­ve for­ward. Once in a while I will make big­ger changes, and that in turn leads to oth­er shifts. You might say I’m almost pan­icky, but that’s a good thing. I’m forc­ing myself to be objec­tive, to grasp what I’ve writ­ten. To be self-crit­i­cal. Even so, when I read the book to the class, I’ll have a pen in hand, ready to mark out more changes. I can’t be per­fect, but I can always be bet­ter. For readers.