Selkies novel sent off
Both the Supersessions and the Master Class at Byron Bay went well. The individual sessions were pretty intense, as you can imagine, but in a good way!, and the workshop on Thursday was a whole lot of fun. I got 6 more people addicted to using scrapbooks to work their way into stories. I managed to get in a walk along the main beach on Wednesday night, so that I registered that I wasn't in Sydney any more; the drive up to Coolangatta on Thursday night, with Mt Warning coming and going out of the country on the left helped as well.
On the plane up and back, and whenever I got a spare moment in Byron (not often), and since I got back, I've been reading through the revised MS of The Brides of Rollrock Island, looking for typos and howlers and previously-unnoticed chimings and repetitions, and just generally sweating the small stuff (which is quite enjoyable once you've established what the big stuff's going to be). And last night I got to the end of that, and typed the corrections in, and sent the editable MS off to my agent Jill. Wow, it's done—for the moment. Yes, I know, three different editors will come back to me with questions and suggestions, and when they do I'll be glad they did. But for now I can briefly delude myself that it's finished, and that's a very nice feeling.
Now what? Well, there's that colonial NSW novel I promised the Premier I'd write two years ago. The research and experiment phase of that should begin in earnest now. Then there are all the short stories I promised people; when I'm writing a novel, a short story looks so attractive, I tend to say yes to all requests for them, and now I've got so many short story commitments, they'd make a collection if I put them all together. Some are drafted already—one of these drafts, I used for an example of a nearly-there-but-not-quite short story at the Byron workshop—and some are at the floating idea stage, and some I have no idea how I'm going to tackle.
I'm going to have a bit of reading to do over the next couple of months, but not nearly as much as I thought I would, so there will be time to work on both the novel (it's so unformed, I have a working title for it but I don't feel certain enough to say it out loud yet) and some of these stories.
There are also a couple of workshops I have to give, one at the NSW Writers' Centre on short story writing on 19 June, which is open to the public. If you're in Sydney, come along for that one!
Meanwhile, the Vintage paperback of Tender Morsels is coming out soon in the UK. This is the one with 'A WORK OF GENIUS' as the subtitle, in copper-coloured foil. The Lovereading site have taken slight liberties with my bio. I don't know how they know I'm a 'superb' technical writer—although I am, of course! But I don't know that they realise that being a good tech. writer says nothing about your abilities as a fiction writer. Funny.
On the plane up and back, and whenever I got a spare moment in Byron (not often), and since I got back, I've been reading through the revised MS of The Brides of Rollrock Island, looking for typos and howlers and previously-unnoticed chimings and repetitions, and just generally sweating the small stuff (which is quite enjoyable once you've established what the big stuff's going to be). And last night I got to the end of that, and typed the corrections in, and sent the editable MS off to my agent Jill. Wow, it's done—for the moment. Yes, I know, three different editors will come back to me with questions and suggestions, and when they do I'll be glad they did. But for now I can briefly delude myself that it's finished, and that's a very nice feeling.
Now what? Well, there's that colonial NSW novel I promised the Premier I'd write two years ago. The research and experiment phase of that should begin in earnest now. Then there are all the short stories I promised people; when I'm writing a novel, a short story looks so attractive, I tend to say yes to all requests for them, and now I've got so many short story commitments, they'd make a collection if I put them all together. Some are drafted already—one of these drafts, I used for an example of a nearly-there-but-not-quite short story at the Byron workshop—and some are at the floating idea stage, and some I have no idea how I'm going to tackle.
I'm going to have a bit of reading to do over the next couple of months, but not nearly as much as I thought I would, so there will be time to work on both the novel (it's so unformed, I have a working title for it but I don't feel certain enough to say it out loud yet) and some of these stories.
There are also a couple of workshops I have to give, one at the NSW Writers' Centre on short story writing on 19 June, which is open to the public. If you're in Sydney, come along for that one!
Meanwhile, the Vintage paperback of Tender Morsels is coming out soon in the UK. This is the one with 'A WORK OF GENIUS' as the subtitle, in copper-coloured foil. The Lovereading site have taken slight liberties with my bio. I don't know how they know I'm a 'superb' technical writer—although I am, of course! But I don't know that they realise that being a good tech. writer says nothing about your abilities as a fiction writer. Funny.
posted by Among Amid While at 7:55 am
5 Comments:
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I love that cover of Tender Morsels, it is just beautiful. I love that one and the Shaun Tan cover as well, and obviously the story within the cover is pretty darn good as well!! Looking forward to future works!! :)
Who is the "work of genius" quote from, Margo? I can't read the cover!
Thanks, Elise! This book has a lot of lovable covers.
Judy, the quote is from the Sunday Telegraph (UK)
Was I one of the 'intense' ones, Margo? :)
In the midst of bashing my synopsis into some sort of sensible shape before I submit to the manuscript development thingy on Friday. I want to thank you again for your time and hard questions in Byron. I have enormous respect for your writing and hence your opinions. You've obviously worked hard at your craft and inspire me to keep working harder. Writing about magic isn't a magical process. It's yakka!
Sally
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