Choices is very happy to host Linda Stewart Henley while she's on her Women on Writing WOW! virtual book tour. Her book, Waterbury Winter, a heart-warming novel about ordinary people reclaiming their dormant potential, celebrates the restorative value of art and the joy to be found in keeping promises. And especially for Choices, Linda has also written about the advantages of hiring an editor to ready our books for publication. I agree. Editors have been so valuable when I was getting ready to publish my books as well. Here's Linda: WHAT A DIFFERENCE AN EDITOR MAKES by Linda Stewart Henley When my debut novel Estelle was accepted for publication my first reaction, not surprisingly, was one of exhilaration. I had written a novel that had caught someone’s attention, and I would become an author. Then reality set in. How could the publisher judge its worth from only the first fifty pages? Maybe it wasn’t good enough. Maybe I would embarrass myself by sending it out into the … [Read more...]
I’ve become a revision fiend
I’m sure you’ve heard this before. But I need to tell it to you again. Book revision and editing will be harder and will take longer than the actual writing of your book. So be prepared to stay with it for the long haul before you start. In other words: Make the Decision to Do the Hard Work Before You Start to Write a Book. Here’s a true story. After I wrote the first draft of my memoir I hired an editor who helped me prepare it for submittal to interested agents and presses. This took about a year. Then once I had a book contract, my publisher requested an enormous amount of revisions to that draft. So I spent another six months revising and editing my manuscript with the help of three writing friends who checked my work for repetition, inconsistencies, chapter organization, wording, and typos. Afterward, the publisher’s editor worked another month doing a final review and edit before producing the first hardback edition. After my memoir’s release in May 2011 many readers … [Read more...]
Novel successes and woes
I've been glued to my chair working on my novel for months: writing new scenes, converting dialogue into inner monologues, changing tense from present to past, creating new chapters where three asterisks indicated breaks in the text, and generally editing as I went through it over and over again. A little bit about my new scenes* process: I marked up my manuscript to indicate where (with page number) a new scene was needed and what the scene should consist of. I highlighted that marker in yellow. I then copied the marker and pasted it in a new document called New Scenes. I created the new scenes in the New Scenes document without touching my original manuscript. When I finished creating the scenes I edited them several times to make them as mature as my original manuscript, already in its eighth draft. Then I merged the scenes into the manuscript, starting from the end of the book, so I wouldn't mess with the page numbers And as I copied and pasted the … [Read more...]
How my novel is progressing
I haven't written about my work on my novel for quite some time. So, I thought I'd bring you up to date. Yes, you're right. I'm still working on it after all these years about seven at least. However, I think I'm finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. After all, I'm working on draft number eight. A few months ago, I hired an editor to do an assessment critique, and after a thorough reading, he provided me with ten pages of single-spaced notes, with many rewriting assignments. Before I embarked on any of it I asked him to honestly tell me if I should put the book on a shelf and forget about it, or keep on working. He suggested I keep working, and that's what I'm been doing. For the last several weeks I've been working steadily to accomplish the editor's suggestions. And while I work on the novel, I totally ignore social media of every kind. That was hard at first, but it gets easier with time. The first thing I did was abide by the editor's suggestion to change … [Read more...]
Novel in progress
I'm almost finished with revision three of my first novel. After that's done, I'm hoping to recruit a few beta readers to read and critique. Needless to say it scares me to death. Putting this project out there is a huge confront. And of course the first group of beta readers is not the end. I'll use the comments to create revision four and then send it out again to another group of readers. After that, one more revision and a final edit by a professional. It seems like all this is taking forever, but in the end, I think my book will be better off for it. Plus, it will help me get used to sharing it before it hopefully gets published. My novel is historical -- early 1900s on into the 1920s -- and the age of the flapper. In my research I found a long list of flapper words and I've inserted some in appropriate chapters. I've found these words fascinating, and thought I'd share a few with you here. I'd love your thoughts - has anyone ever used these terms? This is … [Read more...]
