The publisher's edit.

I mentioned a week or so ago that I'd had the edit of StarMark through from BInk - I sent it back on Monday last, and thought you might like to know something of the process - and what I found out about myself because of it!

I've edited other people's work before, so I know it takes a lot of time to prepare. All those comment boxes, suggesting different ways to write something or what to add in or whether there's a tic (repeated problem) that needs fixing. I've also been on the receiving end of edits too - Writer's Workshop have some amazing editors whose reports have helped several of my friends to snaffle a publication deal. (As did I, after mine...!)

In that respect, I knew what to expect. I also knew to apply the 'Accept, Amend, Reject' rule, but only after careful consideration - it's too easy to have a knee-jerk reaction if the edit is less than complimentary in certain places. I knew to be as objective as possible to get the most out of it. At the end of the day, there is one goal - to make the story the best it can be.

I started by printing out the MS. All 273 pages of it. Warts and all. Then I read it through, taking note of the changes and scribbling in the margins what I might be able to add or alter. Only when I'd done that did I allow myself to work on the electronic copy, accepting insertions and deletions, deleting comment boxes, improving certain scenes, adding extra scenes... It took a heck of a lot longer than I anticipated.

All 273 pages...and a few post-it notes

Comments, insertions and deletions aplenty...
pleased to say not every page had this many!

I did note some interesting things from this particular edit - and all the following examples are lifted straight from the manuscript. Bear in mind some are out of context, so they might sound a little strange in isolation.

1. Sometimes, I'm a lazy writer. There were a few places where it was suggested I expand the scene, because I'd effectively cheated the reader and written a short summary paragraph to tell what was happening instead of really showing the action through Irvana's eyes. On reading through, I agreed; I'd been very lazy in those places.

2. I use participle phrases. A lot. For example - 'Then she raised her head, gazing through swollen eyes at...' The participle phrase causes simultaneous actions, which isn't a good thing. So the sentence becomes 'Then she raised her head and gazed through swollen eyes at...' Mind you, I found that if I wasn't careful, I ended up with a list of 'ands', so sometimes a little more restructuring was needed to lose a few of them.

3. I use disembodied actions quite frequently. eg 'The whispered name brought her head snapping round'. The head doesn't move on its own - it belongs to Irvana, so it becomes 'Irvana looked quickly at Gramma.' Another example; 'A large handkerchief was pressed into her hand.' By who? Or what? See what I mean?

4. POV slips. On the whole, these were quite subtle - it wasn't a case of 'Jane wondered whether she should wear the red dress. Jack hoped Jane would wear the red dress because it suited her better than the blue one.'  More a case of 'When the woman saw the girl standing beside the track, she dug her elbow into the man's ribs.' How does Irvana, whose POV we are in at that point, know that? It has to change to something like 'The woman must have caught sight of her standing by the track because she dug her elbow into the man's ribs.' It made me realise how utterly important it is to stay in your POV character's head all the time.

5. No-one. I always, always write no-one, hyphenated. Throughout the edit, it had been changed to no one, unhyphenated. I did a bit of a straw poll about it, because I wasn't sure if it was an Americanism re formatting, or if there were two ways of writing it (a bit like organised and organized) or if I was just plain wrong. Turns out I'm wrong. But it may take a while to retrain my fingers to leave the hyphen out.

6. American formatting uses em-dashes with no space either side where in the UK, we'd use an en-dash and spaces. Which I didn't realise until I'd marked them all up. Every. Single. One. And I use en-dashes a lot. I discovered it by accident - was reading something and the long line with no space jumped out of the text at me and I realised the book had been published in the US. Then I ran upstairs to look in Jody-Klaire's book (fellow Binkie and awesome author) and sure enough...

There were a whole range of other, more minor things too, but I won't list them all.

Having gone through everything, the edit is now back with BInk, to see whether I've polished up the smuts enough to pass muster, or whether I have to get the Brasso out and go over it one more time for it to really sparkle.

I feel exhausted, elated, excited - and very apprehensive, as StarMark takes another step closer to publication. That's when a whole new experience begins...

St Crispin's

Last Thursday, I spent a brilliantly creative morning with Years 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 at St. Crispin's in Leicester.

Now, I've done author visits and creative writing sessions for younger pupils, (Like when I went to St. Michael's or ran a storytelling day at a local primary school) but this was my first foray into KS3... I was a little apprehensive, more from a point of view of maintaining discipline than anything else, because I know from teacher friends and my own children how hard it can be to keep that age interested and occupied.

Anyway, I arrived, finally found somewhere to park (I had to nip out after an hour to move the car, as I ended up in a limited time parking bay - not good for an all morning session. Thank you Mr L for moving your car so I didn't end up with a parking ticket!), and booked in.

The school is lovely - a small independent school with around 120 pupils between nursery and Y11, so class sizes are small; Y9 had four pupils... It's situated in two enormous Victorian villas, so there are a lot of steps and big high-ceilinged rooms, but I was in the library. (Glad to see an amazing array of books, with some really interesting fiction on offer.)

We started with a Q&A session, which Y5 & 6 gatecrashed. It was great though - some really good, intelligent questions were asked, about whether I wrote about my children (no...well, not that they would notice!), what was my favourite story I'd written (Granny Rainbow and the Black Shadow - responsible for a lot of things, that story), who was my favourite author (Terry Pratchett) and had I ever given up on writing (yes, after I got a really bad report from an editor after she read the first version of StarMark). And many more...

Y5 & 6 would've been happy to ask questions all morning, I think, but the KS3 bods had some work to do. I'd been asked for sessions on character development and creating settings, which I was happy to provide.

The twenty eight pupils were brilliant. They threw themselves into the tasks wholeheartedly, and came up with some really strong ideas. The character who stuck in my head was the assassin who would only ever eat red things because it reminded him of blood... and the setting I couldn't forget was the cottage in the woods, with the eerie strains of 'I'm a Barbie girl' heard coming from the trees...

We didn't have enough time to read out the end results, when the pupils put their characters into their settings, but I hope the children will continue to work on them.

We were all so busy, I didn't take any pictures at all, but Mrs M took a few snaps - here's one of me reading from 'A Seeming Glass', when I was trying to explain how you could dribble the description of a setting into a scene rather than describe everything up front.

One thing that astounded me was that every pupil over Y8 takes part in NaNoWriMo! At which point I applauded them, because I can't stick to the discipline of writing every day. I come close, but it doesn't work for me to be that strict with myself. I look forward to seeing what they produce this November - who knows, perhaps we'll have to get together again, have an editing session?

The morning was over way too soon. Thank you to everyone at St Crispin's who made me feel so welcome and shared my love of writing by creating such brilliant work! 

A little bit of flash - In the Darkness of Night...

As you'll have seen from my previous post, I've been busy editing StarMark. Still am, actually - had completely under estimated how much time it takes, but more of that at a later date! 

Last Wednesday, I took some time off from editing to go to NIBS.

We had a musical evening...no singing, but I did take a stack of CD's with me. 

One of the exercises was to pick a CD whose artwork appealed, and use that as inspiration.What was interesting was that they were my CD's - and I'd never looked so closely at some of the art before. Did you realise that on the Muse album Resistance, there's the world right in the centre of the rainbow tunnel? Or that on Muse's Absolution cover, the guy left standing has a gas mask in his hand? I didn't. (And yes, I have a lot of Muse!)

Anyway, I chose Madness's The Liberty of Norton Folgate. Here's the cover;

Now, at first sight, the shadow looks like he's dancing, but there's something about the silhouette that I found more sinister. Perhaps I'd been watching too much Dickensian...but it definitely felt a bit Victorian.

Anyway, here's what I wrote as a result...

In the darkness of night...

In the darkness of night, 

he comes,

in a coat made of shadow,

his cane tapping time away with every cobble it connects with.

A hint of swagger,

a dance of confidence,

where there is fear in a street cowed by his rule.

He trips lightly in this place,

tips his hat to the women he owns...

On the surface a gentleman-

but the cane breaks flesh and bone if his property fails to deliver.

In the darkness of night he comes,

to be caught only by the lamplight - never the law -

near dark alleys and dead ends,

watching and waiting with a tiger's smile

to entice the curious or desperate to sample his wares.

Until, as the gas lamps sputter and fade at dawn

he melts away until darkness falls.

Polishing for publication

Very, VERY excited to be able to say that Bedazzled Ink have waved their magic wand over StarMark and I am - at this precise moment - printing out the manuscript to have a look at the edited version. Having edited the work of others myself, I know how many hours it must have taken Casey to work her magic on my words...

Already, I have had to look up 'participle phrases'. Apparently I use them a lot - incorrectly - which means I have, if I've understood how participle phrases work correctly, a serious case of dangling modifiers. Sounds like a rare disease! But I'm learning, and a good writer continues to learn and improve their craft, so I don't mind.

As soon as the printer's finished, the serious side begins. Accept, Amend, Reject will be applied to BInk's fabulous editing to make StarMark the best book it can be.

Looks like it'll be a busy, StarMark dominated weekend...but worth it.

Rewriting Dickens

Last night, I got round to watching the last two episodes of Dickensian, the new BBC drama which began before Christmas.

I've loved it! I don't watch any soaps as a rule, but this series was a bit like watching a Victorian version of Eastenders - in fact, the writer Tony Jordan, IS an Eastenders writer. I know which version of his writing I prefer...

I'll admit to not having read much Dickens... I cried over Tale of Two Cities, wrote essays on Great Expectations for CSE English Lit, and that's probably about it. But I know Oliver Twist (the musical version!) and A Christmas Carol (who doesn't?), so I'm familiar with quite a few of the characters that appeared in the show.

Last night, as I said, I watched the last episode. I'm not going to put too much detail here, as I don't want to give you any spoilers, but suffice to say, we found out why Miss Havisham never got married.

For me as a writer, it was a fabulous lesson in how to turn an unsympathetic character into someone I actually felt sorry for in spite of all he'd done. (Merriweather Compeyson) and how to turn a character you felt really sorry for into a bit of a monster (Arthur Havisham). But you'll have to watch the episode to see what I'm talking about...

I've loved the mash-up of all the characters, the authenticity of Victorian life, and the relationships portrayed which Dickens never, ever put together originally. I know screen writing is very different to novel writing, but it shows what can happen if you are prepared to play around with something familiar and take a new direction with it. I suppose it's like fan-fic in a way, but for me personally there has to be enough of a sense of the original author within what you try to create anew; in the murky world of Dickensian, there is a definite flavour of the outraged Dickens yet there is enough of a modern approach in the writing for you to fully expect the 'bum-bum-babadum' moment that always closes an episode of Eastenders. You certainly get that moment - you just don't get the drums...

Can't wait for the next series...

Patchworking...Part 3: Stitchin' ditches and goin' batty!

I've been quite taken up with the quilt this last weekend... (If you missed parts 1 and 2, then just scroll back through the posts to find them.) If you remember, at the end of my last post, I'd got this far:

Saturday morning saw me back at Quorn Country Crafts to purchase backing fabric and batting. I had it in my head to find a turquoise fabric, but there wasn't anything the right shade. Orange, I felt, would overpower the other colours. I looked at cream, but decided that might show the dirt too much. So I was left with the brown/beige option. I must've looked a bit daft, holding my quilt top up to the shelf to find a match...

Anyway, I found a rather lovely spotted beige which didn't look bad at all, so after a few mathematical equations (who knew it was so hard to work out how much you needed to buy for borders and backing?!) I had a metre and a half of fabric and the same of batting. Batting is the spongy layer that gives your quilt the lovely squishy feel when it's finished.

Sorted.

When I got home, I had a play with my new rotary cutter (SUCH a fab tool!) and discovered it will cut through four layers of fabric at once, though I can't cut in a straight line even using a proper quilting ruler. At least I had my borders; slightly wider for the top and bottom than for the sides.

Once they were sewn on, I could layer the pieces. Backing fabric face down, batting, then quilt top face up. I left quite a bit of backing and batting at the sides because I wasn't sure how much it would bunch once I started the actual quilting bit - as it turns out, I wasn't too far off from where I needed to be, so there wasn't much wastage.

Then I pinned everything together. Now, before I looked into this quilting lark, I hadn't realised the significance of the quilting - that is, the stitching which goes all over your patchwork. It's to keep the batting in place. If you didn't stitch across the patchwork, you'd probably end up with a lumpy quilt! So it's quite important at this stage to hold all the layers in place before you begin to stitch. 

The only problem I had here was that some of my safety pins were a bit thick, and when I took them out later, they had left holes in the fabric; only one or two, but I was annoyed.

Then I stitched a ditch. This is a technical term, which means you stitch within the seams you've already sewn. I figured that, as I'd mastered straight lines on the sewing machine, I'd be better off doing that than trying to do diagonals or free hand curves. Actually, I'm not sure my vintage Singer will do anything free hand...

My first ditch, stitched!

I sewed a quarter inch away from the seam on the first few squares - starting in the middle of the patchwork and moving out - and as I got further out, I realised I could use the width of the machine foot to get much closer - about an eighth of an inch. The ditches certainly got neater, I felt, as I made more of them.

Now, bearing in mind I'm not THAT au fait with the sewing machine or quilting as a technique, I discovered several things at this stage.

1. Remember I mentioned about the bobbin thread jumping out? Well, that was due to me not putting the bobbin in the right way round. It has to sit with the thread wound clockwise, not anticlockwise. Once I swapped the bobbin over, I had no more tension problems.

2. You have to try to start every new square's stitching with sides that are already stitched - and if you can, make sure that if you have to stitch from the outside in, you start on a side that's already got a ditch stitched or the fabric bunches up. (The quilt nearly went out of the window when I had unpicked the same square three times before I realised what might be causing the bunching...)

3. Even this small quilt takes a lot of managing on the machine. Most of my time was taken up by manoeuvring the quilt when I needed to turn the corners... 

4. Stitching ditches makes lots of ends to tie off. Lots and lots and lots of ends... I pulled every one through to the back and tied them off in pairs before threading a needle and pulling them through the backing fabric to secure them. It was like being in needlework class, aged 11, all over again...

Just a few loose ends...

I got all 42 ditches stitched by the end of Sunday, and today I stitched the outside edge to finish the quilt off. I probably didn't do it right - there are all sorts of ways of using binding to edge the quilt, but I went for simplicity. I wrapped the top layer over the batting, then folded the backing in on itself and sewed all the layers together. It took so long to fold and pin (and trim where necessary) that I forgot to take any photos of this stage. Suffice to say it was fiddly and took twice as long to pin as it did to sew. Some of the edges didn't end up exactly right, because the top layer moved slightly so the bottom layer shows a bit in places, but it's not too bad.

Last few ends to tie in and...voila!

One quilt. Finished size is 39"x 31" (99cm x 79cm) and it will be great I think for a cot or a lap quilt. I am very happy with it.

But now, I have to decide what to do with it. 

As I said in my first patchworking post, the colours are lovely, but they don't fit with the decor in my home. And the reason I started this project was really just to learn how to make a quilt - I wasn't too worried about the end result, if that makes sense?

So, I think I shall see whether anyone would like to buy it. Not to make anything for myself - I would ask only for the material costs (£30). If there are no takers, then I shall donate it to a charity. If you're interested, drop me an email...

But now, job done. I really ought to get back to the writing.  

Patchworking...Part 2

If you read the earlier post on patchworking, you'll know I'm not new to patchworking; I just haven't done any for literally years, and I did what I did then, by hand. Until a couple of weeks ago.

Inspired by the sewing bee where I made a quilt square - on a machine! - I went down to one of our local craft shops (Quorn Country Crafts) to browse the quilting courses. There was one that caught my eye because it used pre-cut squares of material, sold in what's known as a 'charm pack'. I figured that, having managed to sew straight lines at the sewing bee, I'd be able to manage making a quilt if all the hard work of cutting was done for me.

I enquired about said course...and ended up as first reserve on it. The course was unfortunately already full, but there was a question mark next to one name, so they'd let me know in due course.

A week after putting my name down, and having researched quilt making on the web, I thought 'what the heck' and decided I'd buy a charm pack and have a play at home, regardless of whether I was on the course or not. (I've since discovered I AM on the course, so now I can do all the backing and binding and quilting bit under expert tuition which means I can be a bit more adventurous!)

Am I back to hand stitching the squares, then? No. Y'see, the Squidges do possess a sewing machine, rarely used, that belonged to Mr Squidge's mum.

Here it is, in all its beige, late 1950's or early 1960's glory; a Singer 201K. Apparently they stopped making these machines in 1963, so it's definitely older than me and, I found when researching it, classed as a vintage machine. What does that make me, I wonder? Anyhow - you can tell it's probably 50's more than 60's because of the instruction booklet - just look at that typeface and the clothes the women are wearing!

Betty died when Mr Squidge was young, but there is a legacy in photographs and slides of her dressmaking skills; both she and her sister made their own clothes in the 50's and Mr Squidge and his older brother are often found as toddlers in the late 60's wearing matching jacket and shorts combos, lovingly sewn by Betty...

I had my charm pack - 42 5"squares of fabric in co-ordinating colours and designs. Can't say it was 100% the colours I'd have chosen for myself, but it was the selection I liked the most of what was on offer.

Turquoise, orange, brown and cream, peppered
with hearts and flowers

It took a while to lay them out into a pattern I was happy with. To begin with, I had grand plans of cutting these 5" squares into four and repeating the 'thrifty' design, but with 42 squares you end up with a 6x7 grid which doesn't lend itself to the 3x3 grid pattern I needed. In the end I wimped out and kept them all complete...

I stacked the rows; left to right, from top to bottom, and started to sew.

I worked on each 'across' strip first, laying the finished ones out on the floor in the right 'top to bottom' order.

The first 'across' strip

All seven strips completed and laid out top to bottom

Then I worked from the bottom up, pinning the strips on the seams before sewing (I didn't do that on the first strip joining, so my seams didn't line up quite right)

And I ended up with this:

Ta-daa!

At the moment I have a piece of patchwork with the potential to be a quilt. But in getting it to this stage, I have at least mastered the sewing machine enough to be able to operate it comfortably. Although I do have to keep checking the bobbin, as the thread's jumping out which upsets the tension on the needle thread. Ooh - get me! Sounds like I know what I'm doing!

Result - one rather chuffed Squidge.

Patchwork Part 3 might be all about my adventures in the world of batting and backing...