Writing projects: the editing stage

My sister was working in the garden yesterday, giving the roses a first hair cut. Then in a month or so she’ll go round again and do some more tidying up. My approach to editing text is something similar. It’s not until you do the first prune that you begin to see the shape of the text then you can make those final tweaks.

As someone who writes to deadlines for clients, it’s become automatic to me to approach projects in a certain way.

But when I first started, I used to get hung up about starting them, powering through them and finishing them on time.

Obviously I’d learned so much from my writing tutors but I think each writer has to develop their own style. I know that one of my writing colleagues functions best when the clock is ticking – not hours but minutes away from the deadline.

That doesn’t work for me. I like to take a chunk of time and allocate it to as I call it, ‘break the back of the project’. I prefer to know that a large part of the project is done with and I have the luxury of some extra time, even if it’s only half an hour, to go back and do that final pruning.

One of the hardest things I had to teach myself as a professional writer was to be my own editor. The more text there is the greater the danger that you become bogged down in fancy phrases and too many favourite words.

That’s where you have to be ruthless in order to bring out the best of the text.

WRITER’S LITTLE BOOK CLUB AND WORDS FOR YOU

I’ve been asked a couple of times this week about the connection between Words For You and Writer’s Little Book Club.  So this blog – a bit longer than my usual length – is written to explain what I’m doing.

If you’ve been on this blog or on the www.words-for-you.co.uk website you’ll know that this is the website for my writing business.  For the last six years I’ve been carrying out editing, writing and proof-reading work for clients who run their own businesses or in the voluntary sector.

I’ve had a ball doing it and I’ve written for brochures, websites, sales letters, reports, exhibition stands, leaflets and all manner of print.

Last year my work took a different turn because over the year I had 4 separated clients who were involved in writing books.  I got involved in ghost-writing, editing, mentoring writers and proof-reading and market research for one author.

As you can imagine I became totally immersed in the whole process of creating a book from inspiration to promotion.  Which led to a workshop for would be writers and then on to the book, The Writer’s Little Book…with Big Ideas.

My web strategist and book designer (with a background in book retailing for Waterstone’s) created the website, www.writerslittlebook.co.uk at first principally as an avenue to sell the book.  But people kept asking for help so I decided that we’d set up a club that will provide training, support and encouragement for other writers.  Which is what we’ve done.

You can join the club at www.writerslittlebook.co.uk/bookclub.html - it’s free and you’ll learn about all the activities we intend through the Club.

For me it’s obviously very exciting.  The reaction to the book has been supportive and you can buy that on the site of course.  I intend to carry on working for my existing clients but this year I want to concentrate more on would be writers and their needs.

So if you’re a writer and you need:

Mentoring, training, ghost-writing, editing or proofreading

contact me either at eileen@words-for-you.co.uk or eileen@writerslittlebook.co.uk

I’m expecting an exciting year ahead.  I hope it includes you.

I promised myself when I started blogging that I’d keep to a schedule.  And so far I have managed it.  But this week stuff happened..

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