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Editing – Now the real work begins
Writing a novel is one thing. Editing it to be fit to be published is quite another. A workshop I attended with the excellent Brian Langan of Storyline Editing compared the various stages of redrafting to making a bed. The first draft looks like the covers have just been thrown over, some trailing on the…
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Number Three
Finally. The writing of James Given number three has started. I’ve been plotting for a few weeks, and planning to start for much longer, but the actual words on the page have eluded me. True, there have been a few changes in my life over the past few months (selling the house, moving country, etc,…
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Did you kiss the dead body? – Situation development
I recently came upon a poem Death by Harold Pinter which apart from being brilliant in its own own right is also, in my opinion, an excellent framework for developing plot. Just the sort of questions we should be asking about any character or situation in our writing, not just the dead body of Pinter’s work.…
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Elementary my dear Watson
I’ve recently returned from a long holiday in France and whilst I did do some writing (honest) a lot of my time was spent reading. I’d loaded my Kindle with a mix of material but I set myself a goal in the first few days of getting through an anthology of the complete collection of…
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How to find a publisher
A few days ago I was chatting to a writer friend who was saying she’d submitted to around 30 publishers and agents without success before self-publishing. Her book has sold a couple of hundred copies to date and has been widely praised, so why no traditional publisher? If I knew the definite reason for that…
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Not a brick wall after all
Last time I blogged I thought I was facing a major rewrite but over the past few days it’s become clearer I simply need to make some small amendments, a line here, a word or two there, then deal with the resolution differently and all should be fine. As I haven’t written the resolution yet this…
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A brick wall
My, my. I’ve arrived at a difficult place. Sixty one thousand words into my second novel and I’ve worked out I don’t know where it’s going. It’s a mystery in which Inspector James Given is investigating a case where a mummified body has been found in the crypt of a school chapel. It’s not the…
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What a night
Last night we launched A Shadowed Livery in Ireland. It was a great evening, starting with general chat and excellent background piano, then some very kind words from a friend and writer about the ‘new man in her life’ – not me but Inspector James Given, the protagonist in my novel who she followed for months…
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Today’s the day
So that’s it then. After months and months of waiting I clicked onto Amazon this morning and there it is. Finally published. I finished my first draft in November 2012, had interest from a publisher in August 2013 and received a contract in February 2014. It’s taken the last year and some months to redraft…
