Sunday 30 June 2013

The dreaded 'E' word



Most writers love the thrill of a new story - the rush of adrenalin as you romp through an adventure, letting your characters take you on a wild journey. I'm no different; I 'see' the thread of the story and gradually add meat to the bones of it until I romp over the finish line with a sigh of relief.

But then, the 'E' word raises its ugly head: editing. It's often a dirty word with writers - but today I had a thought that might - just might - put a different spin on the process.

(Forgive me if I appear to go off on a tangent now, but it is relevant - honest!)

At the moment, I'm involved in raising funds for a church reordering project. As part of that, I decided to make purses from unwanted ties; instead of taking up wardrobe space, they would be turned into something useful. I expected maybe a couple of dozen ties to be donated.

When I received more than two hundred from our congregation, I realised I had to extend the range of products - a team of volunteers are now making bottle bags, hair scrunchies and handbags to use up the excess. So how does that tie in (pun very much intended!) to the 'E' word?

Well, I'm never going to use the word 'editing' again; instead, when I get to that stage, I'm going to view the process as upcycling. The scene that doesn't work? I'll cut it and turn it into a short story. Rambling sentences? They can be tightened. A contrived situation to get my character to do something I need him/her to do? Revamp to something my character really would do instead. It's still the same process, but my mindset is in a different place; a tie can be an ordinary tie, or with some effort, it can become something rather special and unique.

My manuscript, if upcycled, could become the same.




Saturday 29 June 2013

A little bit more about me...

An author interview, from when Love is in the Air was first published. You can find it here.


Finding my feet

So...last night I set up the blog. Last night, I also dreamed about the blog. Bizarre.

But - I managed to do a little customising...in spite of the fact I have to remind myself where to find the blog, because 'Squidge's scribbles' doesn't come up on a search of Google.Did I just chose a daft name for a blog? Maybe - but as I operate on the Word Cloud (a writing community run by The Writer's Workshop) as 'Squidge', I thought it would link in nicely to my electronic persona there.

Why 'Squidge'? Well, at eighteen, I was a young leader with the Guide Association. At camps, we often had special names that tied in to the theme of the week; my first camp as adult leader had a woodland theme. I was Squirrel.

It didn't last long. Very quickly, the girls shortened it to 'Squidge' and it stuck - for the next twenty years. Although I've since left guiding, I like the name, so I resurrected it for my tentative forays into the writing community.

Don't think you'll ever see it on a book cover though - I'll stick to my real name if ever that happens.

And if you've managed to find me - do say 'hi!'



Friday 28 June 2013

Well, here's the first of Squidge's scribbles; a test of the blog post as I am a complete newby to blogging and a total techno-numpty!

So why do it?

'Cos I'm an author, and I'd like to tell you (yes, you!) about what I write and why. But that'll be another day, as I won't blog 'seriously' until I've worked it all out.