So I used the time I am spending inside my house – covid, and toxic air, and all like that – in order to try and earn some money. I am doing critique reports for manuscripts through an agency that provides this service.
Editing work, even if it is “just” a critique and not a full edit, is a study in the good, the bad, and the ugly. The manuscripts that get chanelled to me run the gamut. What they have in common is that they are usually by writers starting out, writers who are new or at least newISH to their craft, and who need the feedback of a professional crit. But that’s where all similarity ends and the manuscripts can be anything from “back to the drawingboard please” to “ohmigod where has this writer been all my life”. I’ve had to wrestle with basic writing – with literal sentences – which kept making me skid to a halt and re-read the thing four times and still remain unsure of what exactly the writer was trying to say there. I got the second book of a planned trilogy, one time, without ANY attempt at a synopsis of what went on before to help situate me, which predictably made me drown in the thing because there was literally no way to make sense of it without being very familiar with Book 1. I got a MS which clearly springs from utter love of the material but which has been through the editorial mill before and the writer dutifully rewrote the entire thing to someone’s fiat, but it is clearly not the story that he wanted to tell in the first place and thus the poor tale was left a little ill served by this (I had a lot to say on that one – which means two things – one, there was a lot there that I thought was problematic in some way and two, he made me CARE, hard enough to write a critique report that ran to over 10,000 words…) And then I got this gift, this gem, from a guy whose first fricking novel this is, and I hate him, because it is perfect. In fact, I have girded my loins and am prepared to use any personal connections I can muster to get this book seen by editors who need to see it because I honestly believe I am holding a future award-winner in my hands.
As a gardener I spend a lot of time with plants and dirt. While putzing around the garden beds, I interact with them in a way that one might call emotional, or even personal.
If you’ve read much historical fiction set in Great Britain, you may have run across the word Michaelmas—there’s Michaelmas term at Oxford and Cambridge (and Eton, for that matter), and Michaelmas fairs, and Michaelmas geese…so just what is Michaelmas?
I’m fascinated by beginnings. That is, the first words that fall into a reader’s brain when she opens up a book. Not all stories have evocative openings. I was bemused to find that some of my favorite novelists do not, in fact, write intriguing first paragraphs and yet I continue to read their work and love it.
