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Friday 9 January 2015

A small success and the editing begins

One of my poems has been commended in the Kingston Libraries Poetry competition. This is just what I needed as I've been having a bit of a 'low' right now. So this was a nice surprise and made my day. The prize event takes place on 7th February and though I've not been asked to read, the main winners will be, along with Alison Hill (Judge and local poet) and others. Apparently there will also be music - how can I refuse! Sounds great. So I will pick up my £10 book voucher on the day and sit back and enjoy myself.

Meanwhile I have completed the first very quick edit of my first novel. This was mainly to sort out inconsistencies, typos, spelling mistakes and words or speech marks left out. I did of course make some changes, do a quick cut and paste in one part and added another 2,000 words. While I know there is much more to do the good thing was that I still liked the story and I got completely caught up in it and found it difficult to stop reading.

Never having written something so long and dreading the editing process I found I enjoyed it and was surprised how quickly I got through it. But now comes the more difficult part. I need to run off the pages and see how it looks on paper. Although I have breaks between parts I still haven't pinned down chapter breaks. I think I will do this better when I can handle the pages. I also feel I need to slow down and concentrate on each part, not get carried away with the story.

I have lots of notes and questions to refer to as I edit. Maybe after I've put all the edits onto the computer it will be time to let someone read it. I feel I need the opinion!

For now I'm having a short break away from it. I have a busy week coming up so maybe I'll go back to it after that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Heather! And you get to read at a prize giving, what fun! Enjoy!

Heather said...

Thank you.