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Edits Sent
I finished the first round of edits on Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep and sent them to my editor at Carina Press. This was one of the hardest rewrites I have ever finished. The pages were covered in corrections, word changes, and entire new sections.
I have done rewrites before for short story markets. I've done some fairly extensive work on short pieces after workshops, writers groups, and especially at the suggestion of editors who have purchased a story. I've received some greet feedback and learned valuable lessons during those rewrites. The editors at the Australian magazines I've appeared in where especially patient and willing to teach. But working with a veteran book editor who worked first for Samhain Publishing, and now at Harlequin's ebook imprint has been an education.
I've been worried for the last two or three years that I'd hit a plateau as a writer, and was unable to find my way to the next level. I think this experience, coupled with reading slush for a major SFWA-pro magazine (Fantasy Magazine) is the exact push I needed.
The Online Writing Workshop helped me reach a certain skill level very quickly, allowing me to sell my stories consistently at the small press and semi-professional level, and I will always be thankful for my time on OWW.
Reading slush (reading a lot of slush) has helped me to understand why some stories fail while other succeed. It had helped me see what it takes to catch the attention of the reader, how to maintain that attention through the middle, and then give the reader a satisfying pay off at the end. I've learned so much from reading slush and seeing why things go wrong over and over, and why those stories that work – well – work.
Working with the editor at Carina Press, I've discovered how little, despite eight years of hard work and nearly 70 sales, I really know about writing. I've learned more in one week about word choice, sentence structure, creating flow, creating tension, how to bring a character into sharp focus, and bringing the story back around for a satisfying end than in the last three years of crits and workshops. I got an education is pacing and tone and theme and story structure.
I've learned so much from my editor at Carina Press. Now I need to take these lessons and apply them to all my projects.
I have done rewrites before for short story markets. I've done some fairly extensive work on short pieces after workshops, writers groups, and especially at the suggestion of editors who have purchased a story. I've received some greet feedback and learned valuable lessons during those rewrites. The editors at the Australian magazines I've appeared in where especially patient and willing to teach. But working with a veteran book editor who worked first for Samhain Publishing, and now at Harlequin's ebook imprint has been an education.
I've been worried for the last two or three years that I'd hit a plateau as a writer, and was unable to find my way to the next level. I think this experience, coupled with reading slush for a major SFWA-pro magazine (Fantasy Magazine) is the exact push I needed.
The Online Writing Workshop helped me reach a certain skill level very quickly, allowing me to sell my stories consistently at the small press and semi-professional level, and I will always be thankful for my time on OWW.
Reading slush (reading a lot of slush) has helped me to understand why some stories fail while other succeed. It had helped me see what it takes to catch the attention of the reader, how to maintain that attention through the middle, and then give the reader a satisfying pay off at the end. I've learned so much from reading slush and seeing why things go wrong over and over, and why those stories that work – well – work.
Working with the editor at Carina Press, I've discovered how little, despite eight years of hard work and nearly 70 sales, I really know about writing. I've learned more in one week about word choice, sentence structure, creating flow, creating tension, how to bring a character into sharp focus, and bringing the story back around for a satisfying end than in the last three years of crits and workshops. I got an education is pacing and tone and theme and story structure.
I've learned so much from my editor at Carina Press. Now I need to take these lessons and apply them to all my projects.
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I had edits where I've added a couple of scenes, deleted some, etc. It's always very interesting to learn what the editor wants ;o)
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Working with Editor Ed on The Spell Keeper was a huge education. I thought the manuscript was pretty good before the editing process, but man, did we tear it apart! I actually dreaded his emails at one point. (The end result was still pretty "intermediate" compared to what I'm writing now, but it was a huge improvement over the original.)
You will instinctively take a lot of what you learned to the next project. When working on Veil of Whispers and Shadow Summit, I noticed many of my previous bad habits were diminished.
(Many still linger, of course...)