Category: Blog

It’s tempting to just keep editing and never stop, but there has to come a time when I draw a line and declare it to be Good Enough, otherwise the books will never be published. This is my third read through and therefore my third edit. It’s probably enough. If I call it the last…

I think this might explain why I only seem able to edit one chapter at a time. I wrote the first draft this way, chapter by chapter, the rule being that each one must contain at least two thousand words. So of course, most of them contain just over two thousand words and no more.…

…I said, to myself just now. “That” being jam, which I’ve heated up to liquify it, to sweeten some kombucha that I’ve made, before I bottle it. I’m so busy making pills, ferments, teas and potions that the editing, as ever, is taking a back seat. Didn’t get any done yesterday or the day before.…

Suddenly, there are lots of worries. The cost of living crisis that has just had me buying dried pasta instead of fresh, and flour instead of dried, for next time. The global warming crisis, which saw our temperatures reach 40°c last month for the first time in thousands of years, and starved us of our…

I’m sure you know that, while some authors love to describe everything, others prefer to leave it to the mind’s eye of the reader. And it’s probably a sliding scale. And I’m wondering where I sit on it. Dialogue is my favourite style of writing. It comes to me quickly when I’m writing and it…

I’m cringing at the stark difference between the real, Yorkshire characters in book one and my stuffy narrative voice. It kind of reflects me and how I feel, living here. My favourite people are totally authentic, genuine, no choice but to be themselves and no reason to be any other and then there’s me and…

It’s only reading it so carefully, three years after I first wrote Maybelle’s intro, that I realise quite how two-sided the dysfunctionality of her friendship with Zoe is. There’s so much to unpick! I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but I wonder what they would make of it. The rivalry is strong, with Zoe’s…

Words spoken by my dear partner the other day, as I was contemplating a Hollywood-style, high octane re-jig of the very first few chapters. You know the kind: a car chase, a murder, finding the absolute, shocking climax of the whole series and plonking it right in there, at the start. “It’s too slow,” I…

Odd words. ‘If’, instead of ‘of’. Syntax issues. Sentences that are tangled up by themselves, like a wild and unattended clump of brambles that grows any which way, over and under and around and beside itself. When I come across such a clump, either in my writing or on our land, I sigh and inspect…

Argh, the voices! The voices. Sometimes, I regret my decision to put the comtemplative one in italics. It makes things so complicated, not least, the dividing line between the two. It’s sometimes not really clear whether a sentence is contemplative or narrative. Sometimes, it seems like it might be both. I’m editing the very beginning…