And what does an editor do, exactly?

This isn't, of course, a question I can answer. I'm not an editor. But I can tell you something about what it is like to be edited. And the short answer is: it's wonderful. For my next book, So Far So Good, I've been working closely with Pantera Publishing's Senior Editor Anne Reilly and she has been an absolute delight. Her editorial (and, later, her author emotional support) comments were invariably insightful, always practical and often hilarious. The draft manuscript was submitted just before Christmas. At about 80,000 words it [...]

How to edit a manuscript

So the manuscript is returning to me gradually, a few chapters at a time. My editor at Text, Jane Pearson, met with me before sending any of it back. For over an hour she walked me through the first few chapters, explaining what she'd done and why. It looks pretty confronting on the page but really, that's because she's thorough. If two sentences need to be joined into one, she marks up all the relevant punctuation - delete that capital letter, delete that full stop, add a comma. Nothing [...]

2018-03-25T00:52:17+11:00September 15th, 2017|Writing|12 Comments

Online Discussion with Lucy Treloar, author of Salt Creek

Last night HARDCOPY participants (past and present) were lucky enough to take part in an online Facebook discussion with Australian novelist Lucy Treloar. Here are some of the highlights of Lucy’s responses (reproduced with the permission of Lucy, and of the HARDCOPY project officer Nigel Featherstone.) For 90 minutes Lucy was inundated with questions and she gamely fielded them with good cheer and fascinating insights. Lucy’s debut novel Salt Creek, was published by Picador in August 2015 (click through for my review). Salt Creek has been shortlisted for the 2016 [...]

2018-03-25T13:25:59+11:00July 13th, 2016|Author Interviews, Writing|0 Comments
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