Write

Another day, another blog.

Just had a look at my rate of writing for the last week, and even though I’ve not written every night, I’ve managed an average of a few words over 1,000 words a night.  Add in the blog which is generally 300 words, so I’m turning out about 1,300 words a night.

I’m impressed with that given that I’ve not felt like I’ve done much in the way of writing.  Feel like I’ve been flagging on that front, but apparently I haven’t. I’m proud of that. And I should be. I should allow myself to be proud of I can do.

All too often I think I’m useless or crap, that I’m not doing enough. But I know there are a lot of writers who thing writing a couple of hundred words a day is good. And it is.  So I can’t denigrate the achievement of writing 1,000 words a night. 

I admit that not all of those words are going to make it through to the final book, but a lot of them will, and I’m happy about that.

Part of improving my mental health has to be recognising that I am capable, I am good and I can do.  Well the figures now stack up. I write a lot, and I have to stop making myself feel bad over nothing.

I am able.

I am proud of what I can do.

How Not To Piss Off An Editor – Part 2

Here is another in my infrequent series (here’s the first one if you want to see it) of how you can help yourself when it comes to not annoying your editor.  These tips are not any magic wand, but if you do follow this advice you are much more likely to form a good connection with your editor.

Read

Read your own work.  Now I’m the first to admit that this has problems because you will end up reading what you think is there rather than what actually is there, but this is hugely important.  Especially when it comes to dialogue.  If you want to know does your dialogue flow – read it aloud, say it yourself.  If you can’t stand the sound of your own voice, then either get someone else to read it to you or get a PDF reader that can.  I use Adobe (the free download – I can’t afford the full version), it has a built in reader.  It’s monotonous tone to listen to, and you have to figure out the tricks to get it to work properly (no curly apostrophes or speech marks) but it sure makes your own mistakes jump out at you.

Spellcheck

Run a spellcheck.  I received a manuscript with five spelling mistakes in four lines a few weeks ago.  It wasn’t a great piece of writing to begin with, but when I get words like dam spelt damn, I realise that the author hasn’t just failed to check their own work, they’ve failed to show any respect for the reader – or the editor and don’t forget in this case they were paying for my services.  But here is the thing that spell check won’t always tell you – you might spell the word right, but it could be the wrong word, homophones are a nightmare for this.  Also, for example, I often see a lot of confusion over there and their or where and were.  These are irritating typos, everyone does them as they type, but they can be found.  If the grammar check on the word processing package you use isn’t up to much, try Grammarly.  I find that this particular grammar-nazi can be a bit of a pain when it comes to colloquialisms and modern usage, but it picks up the little things that the author’s eye will miss.

Consistency – Names

In the last part of this, I rattled on about formatting consistency.  If you follow this blog you’ll also have seen me talking about names.  One of the things I mention there is to not be afraid of changing names.  In my latest WIP, I had to change the names of five different characters – one character got changed twice.  The reason for that was that all the names were starting with either the same letter or containing the same sounds.  So you see I do understand why an author would change a character’s name which is one possibility for why sometimes as an editor I get an odd name jumping out and sitting there wondering who on earth this character is only to realised that it’s a Rose by some other name that didn’t smell so sweet.  The worst I ever had was one scene containing one boy and one girl and seven names.  Ugh!

As I say, no magic wand, but avoid what pitfalls you can then the editor can concentrate on the import parts of helping make the work better.

Keep on running (even if late)

I’m running late again this month, unfortunately running is the thing the I’ve stopped, one terrible experience at a Park Run and I’ve been right put off.  Still, I will get back into it some time.  This is really just a quick note to tell you all is well.  The depression is under medication  (which I hate taking) and fortunately, these are helping me sleep, but they are dulling any emotions.  Not great downers but no ups either.

I’ve also been very busy.

I’ve finally finished editing an anthology which goes on sale on the 25th.

I have finally finished writing “Locked In”. Yey!   Had some major issues with this.   This is in fact, a full rewrite  – i.e. I threw the first version in the bin and rewrote from scratch. I’d had an edit done on the first version and boy did it tear me apart!

After the rewrite I went back to the comments to check I’d done everything  – and I hadn’t.   So I was in a quandary as to what to do. This was all about a secondary plot line that wasn’t working. So I took some advice that I disagreed with.  Then I ignored the advice and decided to delete all references to the second plot line – and after I had, I’d only lost less than 1000 words. So that’s it, gone.  Sometimes you just have to cut out the deadwood.

And, of course, I’ve been reading and reviewing comics.

So life continues and I hope to blog again soon.