Authors Electric

  I’ve just had a hissy fit on Facebook because – and it’s entirely my fault – I sent a poem off with my usual lack of hope, was amazed to find it (a) shortlisted, (b) up on a website and (c) to be published in a chapbook. The thing is, AFTER sending it off, I could see several things wrong with it. I never learn. However, the information had mentioned editing so I was hopeful that at least I could change the terrible last line. Nope. The Editor was happy with it as it was, except for one comma. Oh, and I’d also agreed to read it in an online showcase…Cringe!  My hissing and ranting – ‘I can’t read it!’ etc. resulted in several kind people encouraging me to read my updated version instead, and other people saying things like ‘but they like it, they must know what they’re talking about,’ and finally, ‘why don’t you trust them?’ Ah. That’s the thing. I’ve had bad and good encounters with editors over the years. Sometimes they have improved my work and sometimes they have mad...

Being dyslexic is something universally recognised but frequently misunderstood. The assumption is that a dyslexic cannot read or write, or even function where the written word is concerned. The reality is very different. There are levels of dyslexia governed by many things too numerous to mention. Those of us on the upper ends of the scale can have a hard time convincing people there is a problem at all because people in general don’t understand what those problems are. I am constantly aware of the dangers in using wrong or misplaced words without my being aware of doing so. I know perfectly well which words should be used, and where, but all too often the link between eye and brain simply fails and it can take me three or four edits to spot them. The most frequent pitfalls arise from real words that are very similar in spelling and even usage: e.g. ‘to’ when it should be ‘too’, ‘of’ when it should be ‘off’.  Likewise before writing words receive or their the old rhy...

  Not long ago the editor of a literary journal I hold in some esteem expressed interest in running a story I had submitted, while suggesting a few revisions. I know the drill. I sat behind that de s k for many years myself, Shari Lews and friends back when I was a magazine and small press editor–and even now, part time, as a contributing editor for a local quarterly. I read her email carefully, and with a mixture of enthusiasm and caution. I appreciated her generous praise for my prose and the care she took with her feedback. But I'm always leery about pulling on yarn after a sweater has been knitted.   As a editor, I learned to rein in my writing self and resist the temptation to snatch the pen away from a hapless contributor and show how its done – or how I thought it should be done. I learned that a good developmental editor – as opposed to equally vital copy editors and proofreaders down the production chain – encourages and guides more than corrects. That...

No more monkey business. You’ve only to spend a little time in the real or virtual company of writers to hear some version of accepted wisdom. We all need editors, kill your darlings, less is more. I used to agree. And there’s a part of me that still does. I’m all for editing as a process, although there’s a difference between proof reading for typos and punctuation – which is generally better done by somebody else – and editing in the sense of somebody telling you that you need to rewrite your manuscript and how you ought to do it, occasionally going so far as to try to do it for you. I’m a compulsive reviser. Just about everything I write, but especially fiction, goes through many drafts, sometimes more than a dozen, sometimes more than two dozen. I revise on paper as well as on screen. Partly it’s because I fall in love with my characters and can’t bear to leave them. Mostly it’s because I love the process of honing and refining. I began my writing life as a poet and paring d...