I totally under-estimated how long and how hard it would be to write text for my 'book'.
I'm currently on re-write version 6 (or so)
I'm really grateful to Hazel for her feedback....she's taking the 'this isn't working' approach to editing rather than the 'change it in this way' approach. Never having worked with anyone to edit anything before I'm finding it really helpful.
Firstly the time between re-writes, when you're not looking at it is good ( I reckon my sub-concious does a great deal without explaining how)
Secondly the type of feedback means that all the decisions about how to change the text are mine, so I'm not beginning to feel detached from it.
Best bit of feedback for me so far was - 'The language is very grey at the moment, whereas the pictures are very colourful. How about visiting a dictionary / thesaurus and collecting some favourite words and then playing around with them for a bit.'
It has amazed me how limited my vocabulary has become over a decade of writing finance papers and emails for work and little else. Each of the new juicy words I re/discover feels so refreshing! and each new word I use opens up new vistas in the text.
People keep asking me who my story is for... At the moment it feels like it's for myself...This is really not a very commercial proposition I know!.....I have started using words which are just not fashionable for children's stories which is what you might expect the story was if you glancingly picked it up. I like to think that it doesn't completely matter if you recognise the words or not, that they should be tasty enough for you to get some flavour from them anyhow. I like to think that there are other people in the world with not dissimilar tastes / interests to me and that maybe that means it's okay to be totally self-indulgent! I like to think that it doesn't matter that I don't know in advance what I'm doing and that it's okay to make stuff up as I go along. Actually thinking about it....I think it's just that this is all I can do, and the only way I can do it, dress it up how I like.
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