Editing

Does it ever end? It seems like I’ve been doing it forever and each time I go over a chapter, a sentence, a word there’s something that can be tweaked or improved. I was counting how many edits I’d done – now I really don’t care.

A win

I am so pleased, so very, very pleased. I’m a category winner in the UKAuthors 2008 Opening Pages Competition. Time for a celebratory drink, I think!

Putting off punctuating

I’m getting to grips with punctuation and stuff. Something I admit I’ve been putting off with the excuse I really need to get the story down first. Now I’m editing like crazy all these things are becoming important. I’m hoping it will soon be second nature, like putting quotes before and after one of my character speaks. After all I expect a carpenter to be able to use a chisel, so I should know when to use an exclamation mark. Wow! It’s working!

Here comes the chopper!

I wasn’t in a good place but didn’t want to waste a two hour train journey. I edited a chapter. Now when I say edit, I really mean butcher! 2000 odd words were hacked down to six of any merit – or so I thought. I ripped it up not even bothering to look at it, there was no point. Lesson learned I think!

Angst

I left for the retreat in The Lakes unsure if I’d get anything done at all. Family issues on the day before I left walloped me sideways, but expressing my frustrations on paper allowed me to move on. And I’ve come back in a much better frame of mind.