Monday 2 June 2008

May SCBWI Talk and Checkmate

I now have time to write about the SCBWI talk I went to in May. It was called Masterclass in Editing and presented by Pamela Johnson, who apparently had done the talk before. She was talking about editing an ms using the macro and micro level. Basically it involves reading your work aloud (which I do already) but highlighting all verbs and nouns in different colours and then reading it again to see what stands out. This way you can work out what is weak in the writing and amend it. Micro level is doing this either with the first paragraph or perhaps 1000 words, macro level is doing it for the whole book. I learnt a lot at the talk and was very pleased to go to it. I didn't get the time to chat to anyone because I left the restaurant at 6.50pm with 10 min's to spare before the talk was due to start. Thankfully it started at 7.15pm so I had time to buy a drink.

Checkmate - I typed up the amendments to the last 2 chapters over the weekend and read them aloud at lunch time today. Only a few slight amendments to them. From tomorrow I will go back to Chapter 1 and start revising that again. Hopefully I should get it all sorted out in time for the deadline. Then once that is in the post, I will start on my 2nd teen novel which I've called Allie and the cluttered school. I am still waiting to hear about my first book but will carry on with my series of 3 books about health and helping the environment.

Well, not long to go before I leave for home.

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