7th July, 2016

Wow, one month since my last post! It has been a busy month, reports to write among other things.

I attended a Children’s Book Writing course, run by Aleesah Darlison, a couple of weeks back and received some criticism on my rhyming children’s story, well basically it didn’t rhyme; not in the meter I had written it. Mind I had no idea of meter and the criticism was definitely valid. It has galvanized for me the need to edit.

I have to admit that I felt completing 80,000 words from scratch was creative fruit and acceptable, I mean, I knew I would have to edit but to edit properly was not what I had envisioned.

As I read more and of more quality writing I realise how my work does not stack up at all, yet.

My days of editing have only just begun and as I rearrange everything I realise how painful the process is.

One thing that Aleesah said was that if it was too painful to get rid of what you have written then copy it and edit the copy. I’m very sad to say that is exactly what I have done! Very, very sad. But somehow it is easier than going over the original, with the possibility of losing all that initial inspiration, which I bet I will not revisit

So I am back at Chapter 1, editing both my children’s novel and Living in London, and as I consider the radical edit I will do on LiL I realise that the story will change quiet dramatically.

And then I need to factor in the sentence and paragraph rhythm as Francine Prose describes in ‘Reading Like a Writer’.

Well I know what I’ll be doing for the next year, at least!

Take criticism with the awareness it was given. (1)