I Can Do This! I said to myself – clearly delusional. That was last year. I joined The Alliance of Independent Authors because, I said, I Can Do This. I couldn’t of course.  I frittered afternoons and evenings away on KDP (other indie platforms are, apparently, available) but ended up a frazzled mess of not having a clue. But as I say, that was last year. This year, last month in fact, I attended a ‘boot camp’ at the Stratford Upon Avon Literary Festival orchestrated and run by the brilliant Ben Galley where he took the lucky attendees through his Shelf Help method of How To Self Publish Without Giving Up After The First Fifteen Minutes And Throwing Yourself Under A Bus. Although in truth that is my interpretation of the course, not Mr. Galley’s.  His was far more organised and to the point. Thank goodness.

Ben is a wonderfully generous exponent of self-publishing, and has devised a Master Class (so much better than ‘boot camp’ – less chiropodic. And yes, I have just made that word up) based on his own experiences of self-publishing, and has devised a tutorial that makes the process so very understandable and accessible. We even survived more than ten power point slides without slipping into a rich and dreamless sleep, which is an achievement in itself. So, for anyone reading this who hasn’t taken the self-publishing plunge yet or has taken the plunge only to find themselves flapping about without a life ring, I would heartily suggest whizzing yourself over to bengalley.com.

And in Ben’s spirit of sharing, here are a few tips for soon-to-be-indie publishers from me:

1. Get advice. As much as you can. It might be called Independent Publishing but you can’t do it all on your own. Not entirely. Not well, any way.
2. If you’re not a designer, don’t design your own book cover. Just don’t.
3. Be nice to people. On-line, in reality, everywhere: you never know who will form the golden link in the chain of your publishing success.
4. For the love of Dog, don’t do your own spill chocking!! See 2 above.
5. Lock yourself away to write if you have to, but Get Out There to meet, greet and compete with other writers – it’ll inspire and motivate you.

Tomorrow sees the second fabulous Hawkesbury upon Upton literary festival in Gloucester, organised by writer Debbie Young, where I shall be reading one of my short stories in three minutes. Three minutes?! And there was me planning to read my really good story about the chef and his new barbecue in nearly ten. Not so. Raconteur and compere John Holland cracked his whip and insisted, no, three minutes only. So, back to the good ol’ drawing board I went and threw together a little bit of prose inspired by the shaggy bleaters in the field next to my house. Sheep, in case you were wondering. And perhaps that should be wooly. Anyway…

…This new three minute wonder will now be appearing in my first collection of short stories which will be released into the wild this summer. Designer Rachel Lawston has created this wonderful first proof – yes, it is as barking as it looks, but then so are the stories within – and we are tinkering around with it to make sure it has maximum effect when it joins the many out there in epub land. Hawkesbury is great event where readers, writers, agented and the self-published can come together and just enjoy the world of literature, and there’s probably one near you too.

Starting off in deepest darkest Cornwall, at the St Ives Lit Fest, then up to the Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival, and then Fowey, then up to a bloody crime fest in Bristol, down a bit to the Swindon festival, further south and along the coast to Charleston, on the South Downs, and carry on to Kent and the http://www.whitlit.co.uk festival. And something London based but wowza, what a venue, The Greenwich Bookfest.

READING the works of a well-known and established author recently, I found myself sub-consciously editing it. How ridiculous! How arrogant! But I couldn’t help it: there were far too many words, far too many overly long sentences and far too many gratuitous adjectives. Well, get me, I thought. I could have written this. Hadn’t of course, and there’s the rub, so I carried on reading, trying to lock my imaginary editor in a metaphorical room, leaving me to get on with the pleasure of this particular plot.

But I’m too easily distracted. Perhaps I could be an editor, I thought. Perhaps I, the great Me, the best writer the world has never seen, could buy one of those Editor Program things, install it with the help of a five year old then ta-dah – a whole new career was burgeoning before my very eyes. Why hadn’t I thought of this before?! Oh – wait – I had – but thankfully realised before it was too late what a bad idea it was. After all, I’d never get any of my own work written, would I?!

At the risk of teaching those reading how to suck eggs, this is my top five of how to edit your own work:

1. Do not cherish each word you have ever written. If you cannot bear to let go, copy your work, save it entitled ‘My Book – Edit 1’ or something suitable that appeals to you. That way you will have a clone of The Original (the one that you think doesn’t need any editing or spell-chicking).
2. Set-to without apprehension fear or remorse with that speedy DELETE button. Choose a sentence, then zip zap zop – delete.   Save the resulting trimmed sentence or paragraph straight away so you can’t Un-do. Because that will be the Un-doing of your editing.   Imagine you’re on a diet and you’re doing really well – 8 pounds down and things are feeling less dumpy. You go to the fridge/bar/takeaway and WHAM – all your fat editing undone in an instant. Edit, save, walk away.
3. Do not compare The Original with The Clone until you have edited an entire chapter – although I appreciate that some chapters may only be a few sentences long for the sake of creative impact. If this is the case…c’mon! You know what to do!
4. Don’t get distracted adding new bits. Would a surgeon do that? I don’t think so. “Hello Mrs Jones. I’m doctor Smith and I’m here to take out your appendix but I might just add another pancreas while I’m in there. Just can’t help myself.”

Highlight – delete – save – move on.

5. Stop believing that this bit or that bit is absolutely totally unequivocally intrinsic to the plot. It aint. 90,000 words? At least 20,000 of them are like nits: unwanted, unwelcome, and difficult to find.   But boy, what a relief when you’ve got rid of them.

So, you’ve slogged through The Clone – now what? Well, compare it against The Original of course. A word of warning though – it may be wise to change the text colour of the entire Clone before you do, as one document can look remarkably like another when placed next to each other.

And so, keep going – make Clone 1 your new original (is that even possible?) and work from that. Then, when it comes to editing, save it as Clone 2 and on you go. Clone 2 may throw up some more ideas you hadn’t even been aware you might think of whilst you were nursing The (original) Original. By the time you get to Clone 8, you’ll be so far removed from The Original, and habitually slashing your own work it won’t hurt any more – ie: it will become easier every time.

Don’t

Ever

Let

Editing

Traumatise

Essayists

It was the best I could do!!

Doesn’t time fly.  For those of you who have contacted me asking if I have dropped off the planet and far away from the blogosphere, the answer is no, but other delights have kept me away from my keyboard.  Yesterday however I decided it was time to get back to it, and so had a little look about and found this pertinent blog by – in her own words –  ‘Vicky… a twenty-something book blogger and social media marketing ninja with a passion for thrillers, mysteries, dystopia, and women’s fiction.’ And this is her blog: 5 Things I Wished I Knew Before I Started Blogging Simple, obvious, with an up-beat tone – I don’t know why I didn’t have the same little chat with myself.  And then blog it. Hey ho.  Stand still in cyberspace and you miss sooooooo much!

But there we are.  Having read Vicky’s blog, I began to toss that old chestnut – what is the point of a blog – around again.  People are either trying to sell you something (most of them, actually), or want to teach you something, or sometimes just reflect on their lives and the life around them.  Obviously there are many blogs which are Last Diaries people need to share, a way in which to cope with whatever it is that is hurting them so.  The BBC’s ‘The C Word’ inspired by Lisa Lynch’s blog of her fight with cancer made me appreciate the power of blogging.  Innate human desire to support and encourage, to stand up and be counted?  Who knows.  I’m no psychologist.  But reading a ‘good blog’ (what is that, by the way?  One that makes you laugh?  Makes you cry?  Motivates you?) certainly has a good effect on the brain.  If the writer can make you think all day about something they have mentioned, or help you make a decision if prevarication has over-stayed it’s welcome, then I would suggest that that’s a good blog.

Where will blogging be in fifty years time? 100 years?  It may be that the keyboard would have had its day and we’ll be able to plug something in to our heads and just think our blog straight onto the screen.  If indeed screens still exist.  How creepy would that be?!  We’d have to retrain our brains.  Mine would go something like this I reckon..

Hello there and welcome to my blog god what do I say next note to self must remember to vacuum before the visitors arrive where was I? oh yeah hello there and welcome to my blog I’ve been thinking about this new way of blogging and how it can affect all our lives bloody hell the neighbour’s cat is pooing in the garden again..

Utter disaster.  I think for now technology can keep me stumbling over the keyboard and adddding extra letters where there shouldn’t be any. Keeps it human. Which, I guess, is exactly what a blog should be.  And that, in turn, is what I think the point is.  Here is a quote from the introduction of a fantastic book bought for me recently, 800 Years of Women’s Letters by the sadly late Olga Kenyon 

“My aim is to show that women’s letters are a valid form of literature…from the Middle Ages to today….they show women using one of the few forms of writing open to them with wit and skill.”

Isn’t that what blogging is?  A Letter?
But for us all to read?
Blog on!