I’ve always written stories and before I could write I told stories, even just to myself. Over the last twenty or so years I wrote a number of full-length adult novels and tried everything I could to gt them published… all without success. I was working full time, and wrote in the evenings in between being a mum and having a life with my husband! So when I was able to finish work, my children grown up, I was able to write full time, a dream come true… but what about my finished novels? A friend mentioned I could self publish on Amazon… and so over the last year I have published four of my novels as e-readers and I’m working on the next one.
Now this just didn’t mean I loaded the manuscripts straight onto the publishing site… I had to be sure they were the best I could possibly make them without any guidance or objective editorial eye… and so I worked really hard on each of them, revising, rewriting in places, cutting out, cutting down, editing, editing, editing. As they were published, friends and readers made comments, kindly criticism on my books, which I welcomed, and each new book I set to edit I did so with their advice at the forefront, and I hope that each one I have published has been better edited than the previous. I am ruthless now, cutting out acres of verbiage slicing through groves of chatter and redundant conversation.
It has changed the way I read… I have had eighteen months of solid editing and I read with more focus, and perhaps more criticism. I continue to write, but not as much. I write this blog every day, and I have various other projects ticking away, but my main focus is to clear the decks of my completed novels. I have two unfinished novels, each of over 100,00 words, so they will be my next task… and then… new things, new stories to be told, new characters to emerge from the page… but will I write differently? Having been through two years of disciplined editing of my work, will I write better? Or will I have blunted my creativity… hmmm… watch this space!
- Farholm – March 2012
- The Stalking of Rosa Czekov – July 2012
- Loving Judah – November 2012
- night vision – March 2013
- Flipside – summer 2013
- The Double Act – autumn 2013
- A Strong Hand From Above – winter 2013
- Lucky Portbraddon – 2014
- The Quest of Frederico Milan – 2014
If you haven’t read any of my novels, here is a link:
Lois Elsden 