Protest or hot showers?

I feel inspired.

Climate change activist Katrina Forrester has guest blogged for the Open University website I edit / write for (see http://www.open.ac.uk/platform/blogs/guest-columnist/stand-and-be-counted)

And it made me think: for chrissakes, we’re all so – so – so lethargic! As long as something doesn’t stop us from shopping or watching America’s Next Top Model or having a hot shower in the morning, we’re quite happy to sit there and let it happen.

Well, for the love of this country and all that’s good, it’s time to say STOP!

I just need to find a cause I care about more than ANTP, shopping and hot showers …

x

Similes are like curry …

According to US literary agent blog king, Nathan Bransford, similes can be like a curry – too many bad ones and everything goes to …

Okay, you get what I mean … see http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/02/your-similes-are-like-giant-flood.html for the man’s words of wisdom.

I have to say, I adore a good simile. And you can’t act on allllll the advice you read else you’ll end up as dull as ditchwater book. But it’s funny, you know. I did a search for ‘like’ in just the first part of my novel and it came up with 25 similes. In the first 90 pages! WTF?

So yes, I have gone in and taken the ‘bad’ ones out, here’s hoping I can tell good from bad!

x

Reader feedback!

Hey peeps! Got some amazingly useful feedback from my readers (including ‘for the love of god, stop with those adverbs!).

Am just waiting for final reader report / edits from another fab editor friend of mine and then, once those changes are made, it’s time to set my baby off into the Big Bad World of Scary Agentdom.

Some things I leant from this whole ‘getting peeps to read your work b4 sending it out’ marlarky:

- That character you thought was really kooky and fun and cool and eccentric? The one you loved? Yeah, well, he’s a complete stereotype okay?

- Readers aren’t stupid, stupid! They get what you mean, no need to press the point!

- When  you think you’ve banished the ‘tell don’t show’ weed from your work, it sneaks in without you even knowing. Be on guard!

- Enough with the interior angst, already. Get on with the action!

- ’Project Waneta’ sounds like a social services file on a character from Harry Enfield and Chums (Waynetta, yeah?). Time for a new title …

- Sometimes you need to make sacrifices. Eg. setting novel out as blog entries may be, like, cool but it doesn’t get the action across. So time for some straight forward, salt-of-the-earth first person past tense.

So there you go, my lovelies. x