So that’s August done and dusted for another year. What is it about the 8^th month that acts like a dam, preventing any creative waters flowing and rendering the garden of editing parched and untenable? I guess we’d like to think it’s the wonderful weather causing a lapse in creativity – all that wall-to-wall sunshine insisting we frolic in the blue, blue sea before being rinsed down with a long cold beer or chilled white wine. Or the lure of visiting friends and family for those spontaneous barbeques that occasionally end with a wasp in the trifle and a visit to A&E – such events not always being connected. Or may be it’s just hard to be brilliant all the time.   Or any of the time. But you and I both know that with September striding out with his It’s Only Late Summer Not Autumn Yet attitude, the C word is hovering on the horizon throwing writers across the country into a flurry of activity akin to falling into a moving tumble dryer. Open mics to organise, works to proof read and edit, events to attend, ideas to nourish and flourish… Yep, summer’s gone and.. I can’t say it… summer’s gone and C…. Ch… Christmas is only (at the time of writing) one hundred and thirteen days away. Not so bad when you see it in text. See it in numbers though, and your mind plays different, more sadistic games: only 113 days until Christmas. Which is NOTHING! So time to get writing. Trying to find some inspiration the other day, I was directed toward some fantastic prompts – Thank You to all those people out there whose imaginations are currently far more fertile than mine! You know who you are – you crazy clever Creatives on Reddit. Here’s to you!

https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/

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Scientists have invented a serum that allows animals to speak. Your dog was recently given the serum, but it appears the treatment has not worked. Your cousin, whom you haven’t seen for years pays you a visit. As the door opens, your dog suddenly whispers in your ear: “Run”

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You manage to get on the set of your favorite sitcom. When you go to get autographs from the actors you begin to realize none of them know they are on a show

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Every human knows the day date of their death. They just don’t know the year

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You are an archeologist exploring the ruins of a dead planet

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After dying, you discover that ghosts are bound to the places where their ashes are located. Now you’re really regretting that last clause in your Will.

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So there you have it. A few lines of inspiration to tickle your fancy with, and ease you back into the garden of editing.  Happy writing!

And thank you Hannah for showing them to me in the first place

What another fabulous day!  A great authors Open Mic session organised by Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn at the Evesham Festival of Words.  It must have been poets day, as so many attended.  With the recent news coverage of the centenary of the battle of the Somme, I read a poem dedicated to one of my grandmother’s brothers entitled and statesmen still murmer.  Here it is.

and statesmen still murmur

we would never meet,
you and I
only grainy images
remain
to explain to me
how you would die
just sixteen
your lion’s courage
could not compare
to your mother’s love
and she, discouraged
you to go
too young, she said,
too bored you had replied
until knee-deep in sucking mud
machine-gunned down
until you died
my Great uncle Denzil
a generation
lost to us
by the conceit and vanity
of others
an empty chair at the supper table
grows cold and dusty
your sister and brothers unable
to close the gap between them
so we lay wreaths,
at the Cenotaph
and statesmen still murmur
of the rutted path
to peace

©Jacci Gooding 2016

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!!