Editing: a never-ending process

In a Facebook Group I belong to we recently discussed when you should give up on a short story. Almost everyone said: “Never!” I tend to agree. I’m putting together now collections of my own stories but only where they’ve been published elsewhere and when I have the rights back.

And here’s the thing: I edit them again before I publish them.

In fact, I read through again and often tweak those stories that are rejected before I send them out again.      

Surely, though, shouldn’t every story be the very best it can be before it goes out? Yes of course. But what was “the very best it could be” a couple of months ago may not be today. We all move on as writers and usually become better.  Language changes anyway. New facts creep in. 

On the other hand I very rarely alter stories to make them more suitable for a particular publication.  The story is what it is.  The trick is to find the right publication. I’ll make an exception, though, if I get some concrete feedback from an editor. I’ll often act on that unless it totally compromises what I was trying to achieve. 

I’m not alone either, in editing as I read my work aloud. The text sometimes needs to be a little different if you’re reading it aloud form if the reader is taking it in through her eyes. Also, again, you have moved on as a writer since you wrote the piece. 

Be warned as well, when that novel that you’ve slaved over and edited to what you perceive to be perfection, is finally accepted, your editor will proceed to tear it apart. Do not be discouraged: she is on your side. We scrape back the layers. The better it is to start with, the better it will become with more editing. 

Over the next fee posts I’ll be describing the stages of editing I put my novels through – before I release them to a beta reader, let alone send them out to publishers.           

News 1 August 2019

 

Playwriting Course

I’ve signed up for a playwriting course at MMU. I hope my friends from the University of Salford will forgive me. It’s two days in October and will involve analysing Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. We’ll also be dabbling in virtual reality. There will be some writing during the course. You can find more details about it here.  Care to join me?       

I’m really looking forward to this and I hope it will bring a new dynamic to my writing.

          

News about my writing

My story Grey will soon be published in the Ginoskso literary journal. (Volume 23)

My biggest news is that the third story in my Schellberg Cycle, Girl in a Smart Uniform is now out. This is the most fictional to date.  Some characters, familiar to those who have read the first two books, appear again here. Clara Lehrs, Karl Schubert and Dr Kühn really existed. We have a few, a very few, verifiable facts about them. The rest we have had to find out by repeating some of their experiences and by using the careful writer's imagination.

Gisela adores her brother Bear, her gorgeous BDM uniform, and her little half-brother Jens. She does her best to be a good German citizen, and is keen to help restore Germany to its former glory. She becomes a competent and respected BDM leader. But life begins to turn sour. Her oldest brother Kurt can be violent, she soon realises that she is different from other girls, she feels uncomfortable around her mother’s new lover, and there is something not quite right about Jens. It becomes more and more difficult to be the perfect German young woman.

We know that BDM girls set fire to the house in Schellberg Street but got the children out first. This story seeks to explain what motivated the girls to do that, and what happened to them afterwards.

Find it here.  

At some point I’ll be doing a proper launch though I’m still trying to decide exactly what to do.

I’ve also continued to work on The House of Clementine, 280 x 70 and Not Just Fluffy Bunnies. The latter is proving to be huge and I’m wondering whether I should serialise it.

 

Catalogue of books for children

This month I’ve added :

Tulip TaylorTake Another Look by Anna Mainwaring. Anna is one of my SCBWI friends and I’m very pleased for her. This was published just a few weeks ago. It’s definitely YA and is welcomely different from what has now become the norm.

Perfect by Cecelia Ahern. This is also YA.  It was published in 2017 and is extremely fast-paced.      

The School at the Chalet by Elinor Brent-Dyer This is suitable for fluent readers, Key Stage 2.  It’s quite a classic and was first published in 1925.  It contains many familiar tropes from the school story. I reread it in connection with Not Just Fluffy Bunnies.

The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett  More classics. I’ve included all of the One End Street books here. They were first written in 1937, 1956 and 1962. I read these just out of curiosity. A lot of nostalgia there for me. They would suit the fluent reader Key Stage 2 and maybe early teens.  However I do suspect that the 21^st century young reader may find them puzzling. I was looking to see if they were “working class novels”. They’re about the working class, certainly, but Garnett can hardly be classed as working class.    

 

Current reading recommendation

This month I’m recommending one of our own writers. I really enjoyed Gail Aldwin’s String Games. I’m not giving anything away when I say there is an abduction and murder involved. This is mentioned on the back cover blurb.

The story is in three parts and from the point of view of the victim’s sister Nim / Imogen:

• At the time of the abduction
• Nim as an adolescent
• Imogen trying to get closure

It took me out of my editor’s. That’s always a good sign. I also soon forgot that it was written by someone I knew.  Another good sign.

You can read more about it here.      

Giveaway

This month I’m giving away my book on marketing for indies: So now You’re Published, What next?  

The last thing most writers want to do is spend a lot of time on marketing. Yet books don't sell themselves by magic, no matter how good they are. Publishers do what they can but time and money is limited, and inevitably they have to move on to the next project. If you can adapt a few useful routines, especially ones you find palatable and fun, you'll hardly notice you're doing it. There are heaps of useful suggestions here and handy check lists to keep you on track.

Get your free mobi-file and lots of other goodies here.  

Note, that normally my books and the books supplied by the imprints I manage sell for anything from £0.99 to £10.99, with most on Kindle being about £2.99 and the average price for paperback being £7.00. We have to allow our writers to make a living. But I’m offering these free samples so that you can try before you buy.   

Naturally I welcome reviews.

Many of the giveaways come as a mobi-file that you need to download to your Kindle. Just plug your Kindle into your computer and save the mobi-file to your Kindle. Or you can transfer it across later. If you don’t have a Kindle here are some instructions that may help:

Mobi files:

Amazon make a range of apps that emulate a Kindle device on other platforms:

iPad, iPhone, iPod

Android phone

Android tablet

PC (Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10)

Mac

Windows phone

(Note: not Linux platforms)

1. Choose which device you would like to read the .mobi file on. (PCs, Macs, iPhones and iPads are good).
2. Go to https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GZSM7D8A85WKPYYD and select the device. Follow the instructions to install the app/software.
3. If your chosen reading platform is not the one on which you received/saved the .mobi file, transfer the file across. For most combinations of source and target this will simply involve connecting the two together with the appropriate cable, or via a USB memory stick. For example, for a PC to an iPhone or iPad, connect using the uPhone/iPad power cable and transfer using iTunes.

If you only have access to a Linux platform, you will need to use one of the many online ebook converters (Google is your friend here) to convert the .mobi file to an .epub file, then install Calibre to read it.

The Schellberg Project

I’ve continued adding to the Discovery Pack, posting the same material on to the web site / blog. I’ve added another page about Käthe Edler, Renate’s mother. Although she was quite a feisty woman she was constrained by the notions of the time of what a wife and mother should be.

The posts may be helpful for teachers who are familiar with the Schellberg stories or who are teaching about the Holocaust.

You can read the posts here.      

 

School visits

I’m still promoting my school visits associated with The House on Schellberg Street project. I’ve now developed a whole workshop for this. It starts off with a board game, includes some role play and creative writing and ends with a discussion.

It is now possible to purchase the kit to work on on your own. Find details here.

Costs for my workshops = travel expenses plus £400 for a full day and £200 for a half day. This includes all materials and some freebies. Two schools near to each other might consider splitting the day and halving the travel expenses and fees. This is open to negotiation in any case.       

I also offer a free half day visit, though you pay my travel expenses, if you allow me to promote my books.      

I’m continuously adding materials for schools to the site that are different from the ones I use for the workshops. I’ve recently added in resources and books to do with the topic. See them here:      

Query for a school visit here.

I’m also happy to tailor a visit for your agreed donation. This can be for either a Schellberg Cycle visit or a creative writing workshop. Any monies raised this way will go specifically to a project I have for a non-fiction book about a journey that will follow the footsteps of Clara Lehrs. I’m hoping to do the whole journey by train, including departing via my nearest Metrolink station. It’s important to feel the rails beneath my feet.       

I offer as well standard author visits which include readings from my books, Q & A sessions and creative writing exercises.

Please remember, with these as well, I’m open to negotiation if you can’t afford the full price.

 

Some notes about my newsletters and blogs

They do overlap a little but here is a summary of what they all do.

Bridge House Authors For all those published by Bridge House, CaféLit, Chapletown or The Red Telephone or interested in being published by us. General news about the imprints. News for writers. Links to book performance. Sign up here.

Chapeltown Books News about our books. Sign up here.

The Creative Café Project News about the project and CaféLit – for the consumer rather than for the producer.  Sign up here.   

Gill’s News: News about my writing, The Schellberg Project, School Visits and Events. Find it here.   

Opportunities List Remember I keep a full list of vetted opportunities on my writing blog. See them here. New ones are added several times a day. Roughly once a month I go through it and take out all of the out of date ones. At that point I send it out to a list. If you would like to be on that list, sign up here.  

Pushing Boundaries, Flying Higher News about conferences and workshops to do with the young adult novel. (infrequent postings) Sign up here.  

Red Telephone Books News about our books and our authors. Sign up here.

A Publisher’s Perspective Here I blog as a publisher. Access this here.   

The Creative Café Project Listings and reviews of creative cafés. See them here.   

CaféLit Stories Find these here

Gill James Writer All about writing and about my books. View this here.

Gill’s Recommended Reads Find information here about books that have taken me out of my editor’s head.   

Gill’s Sample Fiction Read some of my fiction here.

The House on Schellberg Street All about my Schellberg project. Read it here.

Writing Teacher All about teaching creative writing.  Some creative writing exercises. Access this here.     

Books Books Books Weekly offers on our books and news of new books. Find them here. 

Happy reading and writing.

Getting the Most Out of Conferences

I was recently able to attend one day of the Mslexicon Conference in Leeds. This was of course organised by the wonderful Mslexia, my favourite writers’ magazine. 

Now, I’m not going to give you a full report on the sessions I attended.  That wouldn’t be fair to those who have paid a lot of money to be there, myself included, and indeed to the speakers who make part of their livelihood from providing content at such events but I will share with you what I came away with. 

It’s always important when you go on a course or attend a conference that you resolve to act on what you’ve learnt and you put in some mechanism for making sure that it happens. 

So, I’m kind of doing that here. I’m stating in public what I will do next as a result of having attended the event. I expect you to hold me to account. 

I was very pleased to hear Claire Malcolm speak. She is from New Writing North.  Now, I still have a few problems with this organisation. It often seems more like it ought to be named New Writing North East and we need a New Writing North West. Those darn Pennines! But her enthusiasm was very convincing and I’m now resolved to use the site more often.   

She also gave a new template for writing bios which I’ll now consider using. 

A plenary included an interview with Sophie Hannah  My goodness, she is enthusiastic. She has instigated The Dream Author Coaching Programme  and I’ve signed up for that. 

The final session was “Find Your Tribe” which formalised the networking that is always so useful at conferences. I’ve now found another group of local people with whom to share critiques, another group with whom to work on events and I’ve also volunteered to do some editorial work. 

There was a glorious pop-up book shop: https://www.foxlanebooks.co.uk/. I’m keen to use them for some of my own events.  I picked up a fascinating book by Steven Pinker: A Sense of  Style.  I always like Pinker’s work and this seems to address writing particularly. Yes, treating yourself to a book at a conference is absolutely justified. You’ve paid a lot already and you’re probably attending at a weekend between two working weeks. You deserve a treat. 

As always at these events, you get a few interesting freebies.  This time there was a handy clipboard, a pen, the usual useful canvas tote bag, a copy of the mag and one of Shaun Levin’s Writing Maps – How to Write a Story There was also a very useful Do Not Disturb Sign. One side had “I’m thinking” on it and the other “I’m reading”.  I’ve made use of this for our downstairs loo that doesn‘t have a bolt on the door. It also offers a discount for the Literary Gift Company Also in the bag, and also form the Literary Gift Company was a little yellow duck who was reading a book.  Did someone slip that in whilst we were networking? I only discovered him when I got home. Anyway, it looks great in my new bathroom.

Exploring through writing

This is something I discovered when I started writing my Schellberg cycle of novels. I had some superb primary resources and was able to gather other information by repeating some of the experiences that my character had.  

A third trick was to use the writing itself to explore.

This sits alongside “write what you know”. That, of course is a little facile: if we all only ever did that there would be no fantasy, science fiction or historical fiction. Yet it is this very writing about what you know that makes the magic happen. 

There are two types of things that you know: what you’ve found out from research and what you’ve experienced yourself. Add into the mix as well all that work you’ve done on your setting and characters you actually know a lot.     

We’re all familiar with the “what if?” question. Next comes the “What would they do in these circumstances?” You write yourself into the character and become a little like an actor. You may discover some startling things. 

A Masters creative writing student of mine already had a Masters in history.  When he wrote a novel set in the seventeenth century, he found out more about the way of life of the people who lived there than he had done from all the history he’d studied. 

I had a real dilemma in the Schellberg cycle: how could Hans Edler cope with being involved in designing of the V2 flying bomb during World War II when his wife and child were living in England? I got into his head and realised that he went as slowly as he could with this work. I was astounded to read a few weeks later that many engineers working on the project deliberately dragged their feet because they thought it was so awful. 

One member of my U3A creative writing group complains that she has no imagination yet when she writes about what she knows her writing is exquisite. She writes with the senses uncovering experiences for us and confirming them for herself. 

Of course when we write about historical characters who no longer have a voice we must use a little humility; we may not represent them the way they would wish to be represented. We must be clear that this is just our interpretation of who that character is. I suspect however that we are more often right than wrong and this is all because we write what we know in order to find out what we thought we didn’t know.