On the Road Again

In North Wales tonight, in a slightly chilly waterfront hotel, poring over the latest revisions to my novel. The deadline is next Monday, and I'm almost there with the book.

Plenty of fiddly little things to attend to though before I hand over the final draft to be copy-edited. Assuming my editor doesn't ask for further changes once she's seen how I've handled her original requests, that is.

Yesterday, I gave a lively workshop on novel-writing and took ten pitches for Embrace Books at the annual Get Writing Conference at the University of Hertfordshire. Some of the pitchers went away disgruntled, having been informed that their novels were neither romance nor historical women's fiction, and therefore wouldn't fit our lines. I was later described as 'the Simon Cowell of romance writing'. Some people are so touchy ...

Met some marvellous people at Get Writing 2011 - readers, writers, editors, agents, buyers - including John Jarrold, Scott Pack, Matt Bates, the inimitable Raymond Tallis, and of course our own Jonathan Pinnock, soon to be launching 'Mrs Darcy Versus the Aliens' with Proxima Books (Salt).

Tomorrow, I am giving an interview at Bangor University, followed by a poetry reading in the evening, in connection with their Creative Writing courses. I shall read from my latest book of poetry Camper Van Blues, plus one or two poems from earlier books if there's time.

The rest of this half-term week will be spent between the Midlands and the deepest, darkest reaches of rural Cornwall, where relatives will be visited and children entertained.

Then I've arranged a two-night stay at a hotel near where I live, in order to polish off the last revisions, read through the whole manuscript, and prepare my Author's Note and Acknowledgements. There may be some head-beating against the wall involved if I don't manage to tidy up my revisions before that weekend. Because Monday will be too late to change my mind about them. 

Roll on, the ides of March. By then, I plan to have started my next novel.

Creative Redrafting Workshops

Since I've been discussing creative redrafting on Facebook these past few days, I thought it might be a good idea to post up some links to my 2010 Creative Redrafting Workshops.

They were originally written for redrafting poems, but apply equally to prose. 

My online workshops were commissioned by the women's writing magazine Mslexia and appeared in five parts, now gathered together at their workshops links page:


Part 1
First Drafts are Not Holy Relics -
"Have you ever abandoned a difficult first draft that was going nowhere?"

Part II
Second Draft Onwards -
"Dare to do the thing that frightens you: rewrite in an entirely new way."

Part III
Building a Family Tree -
"Mixing it up with a little incest may be the most profitable way forward."

Part IV
Find the Core -
"Every poem has a secret core on which its power depends."

Part V
Strong Redrafts are New Creations In Their Own Right -
"The most obvious way to spot when a poem is finished is when you become heartily sick of it."


Hope you enjoy working with some of my redrafting ideas. If you have any feedback on the workshop suggestions and exercises, please do post your comments here below!

Fifth and Final Creative Redrafting Workshop up at Mslexia

I had some absolutely fantastic and heartwarming feedback today via the women's writing magazine Mslexia - people finding my recent series of Creative Redrafting workshops on the Mslexia website useful and full of practical, hands-on advice for reworking those old and abandoned poems.

The fifth and final workshop in the series is up now at Mslexia, a special series run in support of their annual Poetry Competition, to be judged by Vicki Feaver this year, with a first prize of £1000.

More Mslexia Workshops now available

Interested in Writing as Genetics?

Or redrafting your poems as Building a Family Tree?

My third short article based around the theme of Creative Redrafting is now up on the Mslexia site.

Get it while it's hot!

 

Mslexia Poetry Workshops

Just spotted that the first two instalments of my series of five linked articles on Creative Redrafting are now live on the Mslexia website.

Some of my weary but faithful regular readers may remember my first tentative blog posts on Creative Redrafting a few years back. Some may even have survived one of my workshop sessions using the technique. Well, this is an updated and expanded version of the same theory of poem revision, which will hopefully be useful for someone out there.

This particular incarnation of Creative Redrafting is a poetry workshop series specially commissioned by Mslexia to accompany their 2010 Poetry Competition, the idea being that you hone your competition entries by working through my suggestions - and those of fellow poets whose advice I solicited for this series - and improve your redrafting skills at the same time.

Experienced poets, writers and editors who contributed their know-how for these articles include Helen Ivory, Alison Brackenbury, Sophie Mayer, Annie Finch, Zoe Skoulding, Anne Berkeley and Nuala Ní Chonchúir.  

Many thanks to you all!

2010: what's in it for me?

I was a little morose when I wrote my last blog entry. Sorry about that. Must be the time of year. I shall endeavour to be more upbeat in 2010.

From now until the spring ...

Current project is a proposal for a book on Creative Redrafting, based around a series of self-editing exercises I've developed over the past two years, specifically for use with the BA in Creative Writing students at Warwick University, though I did use part of it on this blog about a year ago.

The proposal is shaping up nicely, helped by the fact that I'm using the same basic material for five articles commissioned by Mslexia in the run-up to their poetry competition in April.

I anticipate getting this Creative Redrafting proposal done and sent off by the end of January, then I have a poetry project - possibly developing my Gawain sequence, or starting something new - and a new novel to work on while I wait for news on my last magnum opus. (Not to be confused with an opus magnus, which is what I put originally, my inability to decline Latin nouns and adjectives being legendary, despite twenty-five years of hard effort.)

Still haven't decided whether Gawain should go in my next poetry collection. I think it's unlikely. Such an oddity. But it would be good to get it published as a pamphlet or chapbook at some stage.

More reviews to write this month - a vast round-up of no fewer than 10 recent collections, commissioned by the marvellously supportive Poetry Review. You can find me in most of the PR issues from the past three years or so ... and pre-Herd and Potts too ... most recently in the current issue, 'This Time It's Personal'.

I haven't thought beyond Spring 2010. Is that foolish or a good thing?