Entries Tagged 'Editors' ↓

Moya Costello, SCU lecturer, author, and former editor, describes university creative writing courses as an imaginative space where intellectual labour and creativity is valued, which can equip writers with the technical skills and theoretical understandings to explore and express creativity. Moya’s presentation at the Nuts & Bolts professional developmnent seminar at BBWF09 yesterday was a thought-provoking and inspiring start to the day for our nearly sixty participants, ranging from aspiring to published writers.

We then heard from the adorable guru of creative writing in Australia, Peter Bishop of Varuna House. He described the fifteen-year history of Varuna as the development of a national community of conversation of writers; the type of conversation that develops the writing process for anyone fortunate enough to be a participant. These conversations also take place around writers centres, writers groups, and online writers networks – anywhere there is a community of writers working their craft and connecting with each others’ projects.

Peter observed that the reader is an individual person multiplied many, many times – each reader is as individual as the writer. He shared with us his fear of ‘not being noticed by publishers’ as he is writing first book at present: how heartening to hear this from the man who founded Australia’s premier writing program of residencies and fellowships! All writers are vulnerable and heroic in their endeavours, and need to engage in a community of conversation to support and guide them through their journey.

Laurel Cohn, freelance editor and manuscript assessor who has been working with writers for twenty years, then gave a wonderfully engaging presentation about the process of giving your manuscript a health check (or perhaps a reality check). It was so heartening to hear of the enthusiasm and respect that Laurel and other editors bring to each manuscript they work with. I was struck by the passion with which Laurel spoke of her love of story, and her commitment to working with writers to to assist them to achieve the full potential of their work.

There was so much information in the full day seminar, I’ll post Part Two later to cover the role of the agent, and funding opportunitites for writers, and news from the publisher’s desk.

Now I’m off to the Byron Bay Writers Festival site. It’s a beautiful, sunny day, and the site looks great. So many interesting sessions on today – I’ll tweet updates as the day progresses.

We’re grafting these branches onto a tree that already had an organic, balanced structure. Knowing that we’re changing the organism, we’re trying not to do anything toxic to it, and to keep everything in some kind of balance. At this point, I don’t know what the result will be. I have some intuitions, but my mind is completely open. [Walter Murch, quoted in The Artful Edit by Susan Bell.]

Editorial Ass has a couple of interesting articles on editors, money, and literature. They argue that editors tend to be an underpaid lot, as are most people who work in publishing, which has implications for the shape of literature as a whole.

Lack of adequate financial remuneration doesn’t stop ‘em, though – thank goodness. Last year, 112 Australian editors gained accredited status. Editors around Australia are again gearing up for the next round of Accreditation exams to be held simultaneously in Canberra, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, and Perth.  The three-hour exam will be held on Saturday 12 September, and registrations are open until 31 July 2009. Today is your last chance to take advantage of the early-bird discount. See The Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd) for information and registration, or contact your local Society of Editors for  workshops and practice exams.

A book can be really tender shoots at first. And if you have the wrong kind of editing at that point it can kill it. Kill something that is potentially very good. It’s tremendously imporant to figure out who that other set of eyes ought to be. Because there are people out there who may acutally be envious of you… [Tracy Kidder in The Artful Edit.]

Good advice. Let’s respect our craft by working with people who possess the requisite skills. But also, let’s keep our feet on the ground, and not get carried away by the imagined value of our manuscript - as does the self-published author in this Writer Beware article. This cautionary tale gives us a reality check: literary theft is not common, mostly because it just doesn’t pay. Better to expend our energies in developing our unique voice, rather than fighting legal battles with writers whose ideas spring from the same fertile ground.

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Building an author platform for unpublished writers can be daunting. Editiorial Anonymous has some sage advice on what to include – and what to leave out –  for writers without any publications to list in their bio.

For those lucky writers who do make it through the gauntlet to publication, Chris Currie, writer and bookseller, is critiquing book covers over at Furious Horses. A quality problem, sure: "Oh I know that getting published has been my lifelong dream that I have sacrificed everything to achieve, but now that I’ve managed to achieve it, I just hate the cover they’ve put on my book!" [cue teensy weensy violins]. The best advice seems to be to give your considered input as the author, and then leave it to the design-and-marketing experts to decide. But as Chris’s posts show, that doesn’t always result in a winner…

And in the wake of Bob Stein’s visit to Australia, over at Another Lost Shark Graham Nunn is asking "What is a Book". For those of us who have heard Stein speak during his Australian sojourn, the concept and reality of a book has become a series of questions and discussions rather than a simple "medium for ideas’ kinda thing. So here’s my thoughts on it:

For me, the book is an experience of ideas. It is candlelight and comfy cushions, a wild ride, a knotted rope to freedom. It is a place beyond place and time where I can find like minds. So whether it’s a tree-book or an e-book or an open-ended interplay of on-and-offline experiences, it is a book. And if I find like minds in and behind and around the story, it’s a good one.

Bob Stein got me thinking about writers as leaders of research and story-telling, rather than as owners of a finished product: ‘the book’. A community of readers is drawn around the cyber-fire to embellish and guide the tale. Wonderful! But I am left with the access and equity puzzle unsolved: who benefits from the new-look book? Will a class of interwebbed literati leave the rest of the world out in the cold?

Remember: Writing Race for subscribers tonight at AWMonline Forums 8-9pm AEST, with special guest Angela Slatter.

Moonrat over at Editorial Ass is raffling off her services in a bid to raise money for her friend with stage IV lymphoma. Depending on how much money you donate you could be in the draw to win:

• a full manuscript evaluaton (up to 120,000 words)
• a partial manuscript evaluation (up to 50 pages)
• a query letter and revised query letter critique
• a choice from select titles in her library

Raffle tickets are between US$5-$20. If you’d like a chance to win some expert editorial advice, then head over to Mischief Fights Cancer and buy a raffle ticket.

Good Luck!

Following on from an earlier post about why you need an agent, Richard Curtis has written a brilliant article over at The Writer’s Edge about how necessary editors are to writing. It certainly warms the cockles of my heart to hear that people won’t soon be able to simply publish their blog posts and random scribblings without first going through the editorial process.

And just in case you thought "hey I’ve got both of those, I’m going to sell a million copies of my book" then check out this cute cartoon. It may take a village to raise a child but it takes a few more people then that to successfully publish a book.