A Short Blog About Edits

All writers have to edit their work. And there are different types of edits.

Second draft edit: where you pull your first draft to bits and work out what your novel is really about. This might take several drafts to nail down

Submission draft: polishing the final story to send to your agent.

Agent’s submission: The agent wants to make sure of a sale, so they suggest a few changes, edits and bits to polish.

Publisher’s editorial: Meeting with your editor to discuss plot dynamics, character development and loose ends. This is a tough one. Just when you thought your novel was perfect, you’ve a load more work to do.

Final copy edit: Just a clean and polish, right? It depends on the editor.

And that’s where I am. I’ve just received the final copy edits from Non, my editor at Catnip. The picture above is an actual screen shot from somewhere in the middle of Arabesque, and it’s a fairly typical shot. Every chapter has suggestions for change, tweeks and comments.

Some writers hate edits, and I can understand why, but only a bit. The last three categories of edits are deep, harsh criticism of something you’ve put heart and soul into, so it’s understandable why some writers can take it personally when they see a document covered in red marks, cut sections and comments for change.

But the other way of looking at it is that you are fine tuning a product before it goes to market. Once it’s out there, it’s too late to change. And the market is very competitive. To allow a novel to go on the shelf without this level of editing – this attention to detail – is stupid.

That’s probably why, last night, I spent nearly forty minutes struggling with three small paragraphs on one page. “Good enough” simply isn’t good enough! Those lines had to be the best I could possibly make them, even though they’ll be scanned in a second by the reader. Any hiccups, anything that feels unusual, hampers the flow of the text for the reader. Too many hiccups frustrate the reader, which can lead to them reading something else.

So that’s why I get a bit of a buzz out of this stage of writing. For me, this is where the real skill lies. The creative bit at the beginning is great, the development of stage two is exciting, but for me, this is where the adrenalin lies, because this is where you get a glimpse of the final product.

Last week, when I saw all those red lines, tweeks and comments... it felt like Christmas.

Story Challenge #3

Sci-fi short, Freesuit is winging its way to INTERZONE.

Freesuit is a perfect example of what many writers suffer from: lack of confidence.

The reason is that I first wrote Freesuit about two years ago. I posted it on a writers' forum and got a whole load of replies, most pointing out that much of the story is exposition and therefore very, very wrong.

I tried rewriting a couple of times, but it wasn't working for me the way they were suggesting it should. So in the end, having been convinced it was rubbish, it got left behind.

But, had I sent it out, who knows, it might have been accepted, made a sale. Or it might have caught an editor's eye to say, 'Okay, but with a few changes,' or even, 'Not quite rightr for us, but we'd like to read more.' There are lots of possibilities other than a simple, cold rejection.

But keeping it buried amounts to one, single certainty: nothing.

Anyway, I found the original version of this story a few weeks ago and thought it still had something I liked, even though, as a general rule, telling, rather than showing can kill a story stone dead.

I rewrote the story from scratch, and guess what? I kept a whole load of that exposition. Why? Because it worked. Because sometimes, a first person narrative can deliver a background to the main event in a relaxed, chatty style. The reader's connection is with the emotions of the narrator, as he recalls events, not the emotions of the characters in the scene. Simple as that.

The important thing is that it's out there, in the post, making its way to an editor's desk. And yes, it might get rejected, but it might - just might - get a different response. A positive response. Maybe acceptance, maybe a request for more, or maybe just a new visitor to my blog. But each of these are things that can never, ever be achieved if the thing is kept locked away on a netbook's harddrive.

CM

Best Read of 2011

Clash has just been voted as the
best read of 2011
by Books, Bonnets and Full-Frontal Blogging.

The nominated books were:

VIII by H.M. Castor

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

Swim the Fly by Don Calame

The 10pm Question by Kate de Goldi

The Double Shadow by Sally Gardner

Kill All Enemies by Melvin Burgess
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Bracelet of Bones by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Wreckers by Julie Hearn

Ice Maiden by Sally Prue

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher

A Tangle of Magicks by Stephanie Burgis

Clash by Colin Mulhern

Dark Ride by Caroline Green

Envy by Gregg Olsen

Hidden by Miriam Halahmy

Several authors I really, really like there, so I'm chuffed to bits.

Whoohooo!!!!!

Read the full story and other categories here

Story Challenge #1 and 2

To kick things off in my short story challenge I've sent two stories to Woman's Weekly Magazine. My reason is simple - I like a few of the contributors (even though I'm a bloke). I know some from writing forums, others from book launches and get togethers. So it seems like a good place to start.

Story #1: WARTS AND ALL is a reworking of a story I originally wrote a few years back. I use it when I visit schools and tell the story direct, as though it's a genuine memory. This has caused the story itself to change, so I thought I'd get this new version fixed down.

But while I was waiting for the new year to begin, another story hit me and I had to write it down.

Story #2: FOOTSTEPS is a short crime story with a female MC. Mainly driven by conversation, a fun little story.

So let's see what happens.

Goals for 2012

Only a few days until 2012, so I think this is the time to kick off a new blog with a few goals.

Challenge 1:
To Post One Story Per Week

The greatest downfall of any writer is failing to produce the work. If the story isn’t written, it can’t be posted, if it isn’t posted, it can’t make money. So, if you chuck enough balls at enough coconuts, you win a fish. That’s the basic philosophy behind this challenge. Let’s see how much money I can make from short stories in one year.

First of all, a few simple sums.

One story, written a posted each week for a year, is 52 chances of a sale. Not bad.

But, let’s say that first story doesn’t sell. If it comes back in week 2, and I post it again, that story gets two chances of a sale, and if it comes back again, 3 chances.

If that continues, with a worst case scenario of no sales at all until the final week of the year, then story 1 will have been posted 52 times story 2 will have been posted 51 times and so on. Add them all up, that’s 1378 chances of a sale.

In reality, I think I’d have run out of postage and will power by then, and I don’t know if I can find 52 possible markets for that first story, but you get the point: by keeping the stories in circulation, as well as producing more, I improve my chances of a sale.

Ideally, each story will make its first sale, keeping postage costs to a minimum and net profit maximum. That means thinking before posting, and targeting each story to a realistic market. No point sending a historical romance to Interzone, or a robots vs zombies splatterfest to People’s Friend.

I’m not going to set a weekly deadline for this. I did consider making every Saturday posting day, but if I happen to write a story on Sunday, edit and print it out on Monday, then what’s the point on keeping on a desk for the rest of that week. And who knows, some weeks I might do two.

The final part of the task is to blog about each story posted.

Big thanks to Dean Wesley Smith for this idea. His blog is an inspiration for any serious writer.

Challenge 2:
To complete novel #3 before Arabesque is published in September.

Arabesque wasn’t the novel I wrote immediately after Clash. I wrote two other novels, but for various reasons they are not strong enough successors to Clash. A second novel has to be even better than the debut, or people will think you’re a one hit wonder. The best way to deal with that is to write three and pick the best.

So Arabesque is in the pipeline and the pressure is back on to produce something even better as novel #3. But, it’s impossible to make that judgement until the book is written, so challenge 2 this year is to keep up to speed and get my next book written. I’ve got detailed plans for three main stories, so now it’s just a case of sitting down, picking one to work on, and completing it. If it doesn’t turn out as hoped, I move onto the next.

That should be enough to keep me busy.

So here we go. 2012!!!!

New Site, New Blog

Just a quick note to say I've moved my site from Wordpress to Blogger. Going to start the new year with a new blog, fresh ideas and some new writing targets, so subscribe, follow or come back.

Colin M