Editing: The Editor’s Blog
On the theme of editing, I follow a blog called ‘The Editor’s Blog’, the latest post of which explains Interjections and Exclamations so well. So if you ever had to wonder whether to use ‘Ah’, ‘Ahh’, or ‘Aah’, now you know… The Editor’s Blog post on Spelling Interjections and Exclamations. Enjoy. Cecilia
Editing: Where to start
I was about to start editing a colleague’s work recently and it set me thinking about what I look for when I’m editing my own work. I made a list but I know there’s so much more and as a friend said ‘but rules are made to be broken’. That’s true but you need to […]
Struggling to finish
I remember doing one of those personality tests years ago and I remember ignoring the results. It was something like…I was good at starting and investigating things but poor on completion i.e. finishing. So when I struggled to finish the second draft (second attempt at second draft) of my second novel (note: first novel still […]
Tying up loose ends
I’m terrible. I keep changing things constantly as the story progresses in my novel and thinking ‘ooh, that’s a better idea now, I’ll use that’ and then I have to make note of the change and go back through chapters to introduce the idea or cut out the previous idea from scenes as I feed […]
Getting over the initial fear
Getting over the initial fear of putting pen to paper, placing my fingers onto the keyboard, opening up the last draft, checking my notes, starting the corrections, adjustments, editing my work, working on the millionth (it feels like it) revision of a chapter or a scene, some days feels like the hardest thing in the […]
The second draft edit
As we weave our way through the process of trying to get at least one novel published, many options are presented for editing that we try out to determine if they will work for us. I watched a video about editing and in it an author said that you will have to cut out half […]
Struggling to revise
Revision is tough. I’ve done very little over the last week, couldn’t write at all for four days. Felt bad. Tried to be positive. Did not work. I’d decided to aim for a target of 10,500 words to be revised every week and I’m not making that target. My aim was to complete the second […]
Scene intentions: or what I should have written in the first place.
Twenty thousand words into a second draft and I feel myself faltering. I look at the next chapter and think – what is the point of it? Honestly, what is the point, what is the intention of this scene, this chapter, what is supposed to be happening? Scene and chapter intentions are critical. When I […]
Reading it out loud
I got this wonderful piece of advice from a teacher. When editing your work, read it out loud to yourself. It does seem strange when you first do it; you are conscious that anyone nearby is wondering why you’re talking to yourself. But you get used to it very quickly. Reading out my work to […]
Write your own damn novel!
This is something a tutor used to say to our class when we were learning to give critique to fellow writers. As a writer, with all our insecurities about our own writing, we get feedback from everywhere. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s basically like a stab to the heart, the pain is excruciating and […]