A Novel Approach

Phew! It's taken a while, but I "think" I've finished editing! I'm still a perfectionist, so could easily go back and do another edit ... then another ... I need to know when to stop Any advice here would be appreciated! I've been writing my first novel for about 2 years now and just don't know when to let it go. I've got another BETA reader lined up, so will let them take a look and see what they think. My problem now is, will I ever be happy with my own work? Maybe I am happy with it? But I can just keep seeing ways to change the story and keep turning it into something a little different each time. Does anyone else have this problem? When do you stop and call it a day, let your editor have it and move on?  I have lots of ideas for other books (which I think I've mentioned in other posts) and am keen to try something else now.  I'm sure my editors and publisher will come up with plenty of changes, but I have to remember that this...

Just realised I've neglected my blog for a while and it's feeling a little sorry for itself. So here's a quick update on progress on the novel. 4th Edit/Rewrite After having some amazing feedback from my BETA readers, I've decided that I need to take a more severe hatchet strike to my manuscript. It was apparent that some things weren't clear to the reader, some of the dialog needed revisiting and some of the plot needed ... adjustments (" The Plot Adjustment Bureau ", sounds like a Jasper Fforde  novel!). Having this as my first exposure to writing and polishing a manuscript has been a struggle to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the learning curve, but it has made me think about how I write. Finding time has been a bit of a problem recently, what with two demanding kids and a busy family life, but that's just an excuse really. Aren't they all? So I am about two-thirds of the way through the manuscript for the upteenth tim...

Yay! Finally I've finished editing the 3rd draft of my manuscript! It's down to about 75,300 words now, so have dropped a fair chunk (was 81,000) out of the book. There are some bits I would have liked to have kept in, or expanded on, but I think I need to listen to my publisher on this (being my first book and all) and keep the work count lower. I've clearly got some material that could be used as "Bonus material" on the website once the book is released, so maybe have to think about that in the future. Beta Readers I'm still looking for beta readers and have just put a post on GoodReads in their Beta Readers groups to see if anyone is interested. Would be good to have someone other than a friend read it, they would be much more likely to give me honest feedback/criticism. If you're reading this and want to read the 3rd draft, get in touch at my website . Once I've had a little feedback, it's off to the editors for their review and the...

A huge thanks to my publisher Rowanvale Books and Alex Paise for the cover design that is ready for my novel, due for release sometime in the middle of 2015 (as long as I get my edits done before XMas!). I just need to finish my second round of edits and rewrites, work out some Blurb text for the back cover and get this off to the editors! If you're interested in being a BETA reader, please use the contact form and then I'll randomly pick someone to get a copy of the manuscript for feedback soon. Ah yes, the book title. You can see now that it is: Benjamin Sorrow: One for Sorrow So the sub-title says something doesn't it?

I'm not enjoying the editing process as much as I did the writing process, but it's all new so still exciting in its own way. My wife has read my first edit and added her own comments, suggestions and feedback. It was certainly a worthwhile exercise, as it highlighted a thinking issue (of mine) that I hadn't really thought about before (pun intended?). There are things I've written about in the manuscript that I assume the reader knows about, purely because "I" know about it and hadn't written it down for them to consume yet. These aren't major things, but it's just a thing I needed to learn about my writing style. Some inconsistencies need to be addressed, apparently my tense is a little here and there. So I'm now trying to find time to go through all my wife's notes and begin the second edit proper. I've got the afternoon off work tomorrow (catching up on time owed from working at the weekend) to progress as much as I can. Once ...

Spoiler Alert - We had a great holiday! A couple of weeks ago the family and I were on holiday out Great Yarmouth way, heading for a day boating on the river. Both kids were in the back of the car, one asleep (3 months old) and the other gagging to get on to the boat (2 years old). We were travelling along the A149, a fairly unremarkable road, not overly busy. Up ahead there was a triangle junction on my left, with about five or six cars between it and me in front of me. There were a handful of cars, maybe four or five at the junction waiting to merge onto the A149. Boom, a small Toyota (or similar make) was shunted from behind by a small grey (not brown!) car that had not seen the car in front yield for traffic. The blue car was forced into the road and managed to roll to a stop, half on-half off the road in a junction that immediately followed the junction they had been pushed out of. Now, like I said, there were five or six cars in front of me that SAW the accident and carri...

Well, made it to London and the Cineworld O2 last night for the UK backers premier of Wish I Was Here . Firstly I just need to say, GO SEE THIS FILM !  It opens across the UK next Friday, 20th September. I, and I'm sure all the other 46,520 backers , are proud and privileged to have been a part of this whole experience. I wanted to take lots of pictures of Zach as he did the Q&A at the end of the film, but didn't. Why didn't I?  Two reasons. Reason 1 I have a crap camera on my phone and sitting at the back of a 700 seat cinema screen gave no chance of taking any decent pics. I got one of the title page with the hashtag #WishIWasHere , but that's it. Reason 2 I realised that we spend far too much time looking through the screen of a camera or view finder instead of enjoying the moment. Actually, there is a part of the film that talks about epiphanies and I think I actually had one when Zach came out at the end of the screening. Yes, I was there and I c...