Three children

The Obsessive Diary - 25th June

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Tentatively I’ve begun editing another novel for serialisation. I wrote it three or four years ago, I think we sent it on its rounds in 2022 to no avail, the usual, I just didn’t love it as much as I thought I would rejections that cut to the quick. Maybe it really wasn’t good enough. Certainly, looking at the first chapter, I’ve tightened and brightened considerably. Or, to put it another way, in the last three years I’ve got better at my job. I can see where the problems are, what might have put editors off from falling over themselves to buy it, from falling in love. For a start, much of the first chapter is scene setting told in past perfect conditional, an arm and a room length from the action. It was one of my escape routes from being present, a way of avoiding being with the characters in the heat of the now, or at least the simple past now. Easier to write she had been sitting than she sat, the former having that intellectual distance that protected me from feeling their emotions. Red pen out, slashing and burning as if it’s someone else’s novel: no, no, no, rewrite that, tidy this up, move that and take this out. I’ve even changed a name and someone’s hair.