Best, Fifty Shades and Zombies...

I regularly trawl the book related sites to keep in touch with the world of literature. Some months are quieter than others, but fortunately the summer months are usually busy.

So I thought I'd highlight a few things- just in case you'd missed them, or have got bored of my office saga and my spells of self promotion. :-)

News of short stories in Best magazine comes from writer Vivian Hampshire. Apparently there are no guidelines yet, but 800-1,000 word stories are wanted. Though studying the magazine's current style will be essential to target your stories. One story a week isn't much, but it's better than no stories at all; and fiction has been appearing in the seasonal specials I'm told

Best's website is being revamped as is the magazine, so perhaps details will appear once it's all completed.

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Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James and her other two books in the trilogy have been setting sales records.

"James, a London-based former TV executive, is now the first author ever to see three of her books sell more than 100,000 printed copies in just one week. She has also broken the weekly sales record for a paperback novel after the first book in the trilogy sold 205,130 copies in seven days, beating the previous record of 141,000." (Guardian books.)

You can read the rest of the article here.

Now I don't begrudge any writer success, good luck to her.

The book apparently has page turning quality- but from something a non writing reader told me this week, turning the page to get back to the story might be part of it.

A few months ago I received a regular newsletter from the publisher promoting their upcoming books and these three were prominently displayed.
There was already lots of discussions about the book on the web so I clicked through to the publisher's website and took up the opportunity to read the first few chapters of the first book.

I was not impressed- it needed a good editing- so I didn't bother looking at the other books, or buying them.

That was probably part of the problem. I'm a writer who has been taught to edit out inconsistencies, cliche's and all those other bad things drummed into us on how to improve your manuscript before you even think about submitting it to a publisher or agent.

If you're not convinced, then do see Sally Quilford's enlightening reviews of book one starting here, though I've been told by an acquaintance that (the second book) was nothing but erotica and BDSM- how true that is, I can't say...

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Finally if you happen to know any fans of Charlie Higson's The Enemy series of books, there's a competition for a chance to appear as a zombie extra in the trailer of the fourth book, The Sacrifice.

"Would-be zombies must be over 16 and have to send a photo of themselves and 50 words, or less, describing why they would make a good zombie to puffin@uk.penguingroup.com by 26th June" and filming is set to take place on the 30th June.

So you need to be quick- not something zombies are usually good at, or so I'm assured by one of my sons who is a fan of the books.


Have a good weekend. I'll be sorting boxes.


LATE NEWS: A Harlequin/Mills and Boon opportunity is coming in a few months, see here.

The History and Future of my Short Story ...

This month I've been revising one of my short stories.

It was originally written as a 1,000 word story for a (new) annual competition at the writers' club back in late 2007. It didn't get anywhere, but I'd had to cut it to get it to the required length, and honestly it lost something.

So I decided to rewrite it and the total went up to about 1,500 words.

It got put aside and didn't reappear for a couple of years, until I decided to enter it in a sort of competition that Writers Forum was running with a few of the weekly women's magazines. I knew it wasn't good enough to be selected for publication- entry was free, but for a few pound you could get a critique from the judge.

The one page crit was really worthwhile and showed me how much I had right and what the niggles were- that I hadn't been able to pin down myself because I was too close to it, and inexperienced.

More time passed and after doing a workshop on short story writing for women's magazines, the tutor agreed to read and critique a story up to 2,000 words. She herself had sold lots of short stories to the women's magazine markets, and I'd read a couple of hers not long before the event and enjoyed them.

It was reassuring that the comments I received were more good news than bad. My story was almost up to a publishable standard, it just had a few minor areas that needed work.

In solving the first lot of weak points I'd created other small issues, but I was quite capable of solving them.

Since then it's gone through a couple of versions, but with time away from it and developing my writing and editing skills, I decided now was the time to make a final push at getting it finished and sent off, hopefully to be bought and published...

There were elements that I needed from three different versions of the story, so began the slow task of cutting and pasting the appropriate sections from each version. The plot was still the one I started with, but my characters had developed, and I'd discovered facts about them which I hadn't known all those years ago.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I finally completed the combining/rewriting as I went along stage. My story has now reached a length of 2, 040.

Now if I can just lose those forty words somehow, I'll be happy. So a final edit beckons.

The womag short story market has changed so much over the time I've been rewriting. The magazine it would have worked best for, no longer accepts submissions from new writers, and it's 50/50 for the second target market.

The other potential home may be the Alfie Dog Ltd short story download website. It's open for submissions and I know the editor won't accept substandard stories.

The writer earns money from their stories being purchased by readers- read the outline of how it works here, and royalty details here. The submission process is all online, so no postal costs are involved.

Whatever eventually happens to my short story, good news or bad, I'll let you know...

Editing and Motherhood...

You may wonder what editing has to do with motherhood, but for me they're interchangeable at the moment.

I'm having a short break from the novel to work on a short story-it's been waiting for me to get back to it for over a year. I knew it wasn't quite right, and I think I was lacking confidence in my ability to produce a saleable story, so the more I tried, the more the story went into reverse or that was how it felt. So I left it, believing it was never going to work.

I've also felt like that whenever I've gone to the parents consultation evenings at school. But yesterday (Wednesday) the milestone of the last ever consultation evening was reached. Never again will I have to go with my long list of teachers to talk to (would I ever get through them all), with my notebook and pen to record the comments from each one, so I could then report back the (correct) details to the appropriate son...

(This is the one aspect of multiple birth families that never gets mentioned in books- parents evenings post primary school are long, tiring and require a lot of brain energy.)

In a few months the GCSE exams will be in full spate- in fact next week it's the art exam. With all the revision classes coming up, stress is building, but there is, as they say, light at the end of the tunnel...

I'm making the most of any calm spells to concentrate on shorter projects, hence the short story editing.

I can now see the light in the story too. The structure problems that I couldn't solve previously are resolving themselves as I change sentences, choose a different word here, adjust a description there, and take lines out- or put them back in.

I'm finally starting to gain that confidence I previously lacked.

I know I'm competing in a tough market with a high standard, so my story will have to be as good as I can make it.

Then it will be up to the sifting readers/editor whether it's a yes or no.

My previous attempts have always received the standard rejection letter, so I can either improve or get the same rejection letter again.

I'll let you know when I finally send it out, and no matter how long I have to wait- and I know it will be months-which type of reply I get. :-)

Editing: I'm Starting to Understand It Better...

After a few weeks of not writing at all because my brain was in frozen mode (figuratively) while I got some new medication sorted, and the approaching deadline for the Good Housekeeping Novel Competition just over a month away, I was starting to think I may not complete my entry in time for my self-imposed posting deadline of mid-March.

I'm still determined to do it, but I won't send a half-baked entry...

So this week, with brain now defrosted, I'm rewriting Chapter 1-again. My previous attempt was okay, but I'd removed too many things that were (for me) essential in the story set-up. So I've been combining the elements from the two versions I currently have, into one.

Getting the content of my first chapter right is essential to the plot of my novel, without it the main characters would have no motive for their initial actions.

It could be done as a Prologue, but some publishers seem to have an issue with prologues, so for the moment it's chapter one.

As I began rereading, and started to do my standard tidy-up before I moved on to the writing stage I realised my editing process had stepped up another rung of the ladder-compared to a year ago.

I've begun to pick up the smaller niggles which previously I would have missed; so when I've considered, will it cause confusion or jar with the reader? 25% of the time the answer is yes, and I've then resolved it.

For example, using 'endless' to recall his journey wasn't right in the context, as shortly after he had reached the end. So some quick thoughts from my vocabulary, cross-referenced between my big dictionary and my copy of Roget's Thesaurus, I decided which of my possible substitute words worked better- issue resolved.

Perhaps I'm just in analytical mode at the moment, so the editing is easier.

I'm sure that I'll go back to it next week with my writer's head on and make a few other alterations, but that's part of the fun side of writing.

I'm sure every writer has their own editing list, so here's my immediate issues list.

• spelling and grammar- especially get rid of excessive commas, exclamation marks and my personal weakness-ellipsis.
• read it aloud to make sure I've not changed tenses or viewpoint mid-scene.
• clichés-watch out for any that may have slipped through.
• a turn of phrase that sounds too 'current' for my time setting- it may be correct time-wise but still sounds too modern for the 18th/19th C.
• dialogue- does it sound right for that character, for the circumstances they're in at that moment, and does it flow when it needs to flow...
• words repeated too closely together, unless for a specific reason.
• Any inconsistencies.

I'm sure there's more I haven't covered, but that's my current list, and I'm fairly certain (apologies, overused phrases do creep into my blog posts :-) ) that ten years ago I would have only been able to manage one or two of the most obvious ones.

It's important to keep improving. And when I can see I'm improving it also helps my confidence quota. :-)

Do you have any editing blind spots, or words you know you overuse?