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Polishing your story to a shine: hiring an editor

Seana Moorhead Leave a comment

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I decided to hire an editor for my story, The White Witch. This is my book I’ve been obsessed with writing and rewriting for many years. I’ve had friends read earlier drafts giving me wonderful feedback and comments. I’ve done many, many edits. I felt I had arrived at a destination where the story was done but not complete; kind of like finishing a dinner but wanting to stick around for dessert and coffee. And I wanted a professional.

After all, I have devoted thousands of hours to this book. It deserved the best.

I did my research. How to hire an editor? I first had to decide what kind of editing I wanted. Did I want a broad view such as a manuscript evaluation to provide comments on story structure, character development, pacing, consistent POV, dialogue and description? Or a line by line substantive edit to help fix my grammar and sentence structure? Sometimes there’s a combination of the two or a third option of a final copy edit.

I decided upon a manuscript evaluation rationalizing that if there were major story structure flaws or characters to fix, I might end up re-writing several scenes so no point in nitpicking my verb tenses (yet).

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A Writer’s Dream

Seana Moorhead 1 Comment

And What Happens When You Find Yourself Without Time to Write.

               Beware! Your Dream Self may have Plans of Her Own.

                               This is based on a true story (more or less). 

                                             While sleeping Friday night…  

I’m enjoying a fantastic ride along a vivid dreamscape. My dream self, with my dream sisters, impulsively decide to charter an enormous cargo boat to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. Excitement runs high and they dance along the decks, giggling and high fiving each other as the boat cruises through the water.

The Captain, a wire thin man with a hunched shoulder, occasionally removes his eyeball to nibble on the backside, like a nervous habit whenever he’s stressed. After, he slips eyeball back into the socket with a sucking sound, chewed end towards his skull so no one can notice. There’s a First Mate, but he’s sly and mute fellow, never quite seen clearly, like a shadow. The only other person on board is The Engineer, who drives the boat like he’s drunk, often getting it stuck in shallows and taking the curves at high speed so he could bank the boat on its keel (I know, we’re technically in the ocean, but dreams tend bend reality). With all the twists and turns, he ends up getting them lost.

They come upon an unknown land. On the cliff banks, there’s a semi-deserted town, half in ruins. Children hide in doorways and cats lick their paws on cinderblocks. They discover a back laneway leading to two-story building that sells scraps of junk.   The owner has a short beard, a kind voice and invites them to wander through his yard of wonders. As they trudge deeper into fray, it extends on and on like an unwinding skein of yarn.

This is when my dream self slips away from the others, on the excuse of looking for a bathroom. She enters a steel constructed building and in its depth, she discovers a windowless room. Inside, there’s a tub holding a sleeping baby. Like in the historical pictures of Inuit children, the child is bundled in layers of fur and circle the face giving the baby an owl like appearance. There’s a tiny toilet – which my dream self uses – slightly disturbing to me, but no, I didn’t pee in the bed. And where a counter and sink might be, instead is a desk with a flat screen computer.

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Why Do We Write?

Kelly Babcock Leave a comment

You know this question. Why do we do things? Why do we climb mountains? Travel? Have children? Eat poorly? Why? Why? Why? Each one has a different answer, so each question has the right to be asked. So let’s ask, why do we write?

Writing began simply as a means of communication. Talking is obviously the superior form of communicating, but what if that isn’t possible? Writing was an early substitute.

Writing gave the “speaker” the ability to be heard over great distances, and to be heard verbatim by two or twenty or two thousand people or even more, without having to repeat ones self. How cool is that? Read more

Happy Endings

Bernice Connell 2 Comments

Openings of short stories are actually my favourite parts to write. That’s when I am most inspired to capture a potentially great idea and create the story I envision. But this writer cannot resist spending way too much time honing the first few paragraphs, thereby losing focus and enthusiasm to complete what I’ve started.

Thus, a stack of ‘beginnings’ has been growing considerably over several years, but endings? Not so much. Recently a short story writing contest inspired me to sift through the files and choose a story to finish and submit. Read more

Of Deadlines and Destiny

Diane Ferguson Leave a comment
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Image Courtesy of: sattva@FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When you’re a first-time novelist, there’s no pressure: No one is waiting for your book. In fact, if you never write it the world will never notice. So there’s lots of time for daydreaming and learning and following a whim. But when you have a deadline, the stakes are raised, the adrenaline starts pumping—gotta get this done.

And when you have several deadlines it becomes an exercise of waves of writing and editing. Here I was happily working on my second novel while tentatively pushing my first novel out into the world. It’s met with good reactions, but not great reactions. (i.e. No one has offered to publish it yet!) So I thought I’d find out why. (See earlier blog on substantive edit: https://ascribewriters.com/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/#more-416  Read more

Cats Have Nine Lives – This Dog Had Two!

Alison Hall 2 Comments

Just when I thought everyone who writes for the public is aware of the importance of grammar, sentence structure, editing, and comma placement, THIS headline glared back at me THIS WEEKEND! news-headline It’s still happening folks.  I suppose I should be forgiving and say yeah, mistakes are made all the time.  I make them too.  There will probably be something in this very post that I overlook even after the fourth time reading through it and editing, revising and tightening sentences to flow for your reading pleasure.
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Writing Gift

Bernice Connell Leave a comment

My inspired artist friend; a lover of all things creative, recently sent me a calligraphy set. She is working hard to preserve the wonderful but dwindling art of letter writing.  For a couple of years now she’s been perfecting calligraphy-style handwriting and trying to inspire me to do the same. Cards and notes from her are little works of art, often including water colour touches, photographic watermark images and envelops closed with personalized wax seals.

A beautiful, decorative box held everything to get me started; three fountain pens: each with a different sized nib, instructions for basic strokes and common scripts, lined practice sheets and even a tiny pointed sable brush for filling in large letters.

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