Roz Morris's Blog, page 53

American English, British English, Canadian English… which to use for your book?

Yesterday I spoke at the Writers & Artists self-publishing conference, and one of the attendees raised this subject… which led to an interesting debate. First of all, does it matter if your editor is American, British, Canadian, Australian, or any other flavour of English? Not for developmental editing, because that’s about the substance of the […]

‘Tearing open the doors of the heart’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Michael Golding

My guest this week says he needs silence to write, but not necessarily aural silence. Instead he seeks what he calls a ‘silence of the mind’, a cessation of chaos, so that he can tune his senses to his novel’s world and the feelings of his characters. Music by Bach and Joni Mitchell, among others, […]

The gallop draft: 5 smart tips for writing a useful draft at speed

November is when web-aware writers get their speed boots on; NaNoWriMo is afoot. We’ll see growing wordcounts reported around the tweetwires, in the forums and Facebook groups. I’ve never formally Nanoed, but I’m definitely a fan of the fast first draft. Here’s why. It’s not just about speed for its own sake. It’s about harnessing […]

‘A cracked but steely song of survival and beauty’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Philip Miller

My guest this week is a poet and award-winning arts correspondent as well as a literary novelist. His novel is a reckoning with loss and a mystery involving a lost painting, and his musical companions range from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Boards of Canada. He describes BOC’s music as making you feel you might walk […]

Lesson learned from a critique group: ‘why’ is the magic question for storytellers

The year was 1992ish, and it was my first time at the critique class. A member read some uncertain opening chapters and asked the group for guidance on where to develop it next. One of the other members began to play the role of analyst and asked what statements he wanted to make with the […]

‘Where words fail, music speaks’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Rhian Ivory (with help from Hans Christian Andersen)

My guest this week has written a novel with a dual timeline and an intriguing title that has more than a hint of fairytale – The Boy Who Drew The Future. She flitted past me on Twitter one day and I set off in pursuit, waving an example of The Undercover Soundtrack and hoping she’d […]

Real opportunity for indie authors who seek translators and foreign language editions

Translated editions can be a great way to reach a wider audience. But they’re expensive and risky to fund yourself. A translator has to reinterpret and rewrite your book, and that level of expertise isn’t cheap. Sharks and scammers abound, especially as it’s hard to evaluate the results. Then how do you get the translated […]

Equality in publishing: gender is not the only agenda

Recently there has been much ado about gender inequality in publishing. In The Bookseller, Cathy Rentzenbrink wrote about two literary prizes whose shortlists were dominated by male authors, and argued this as the tip of a deeper rooted problem, which then became the subject of Porter Anderson’s Futurechat on Twitter. Ms Rentzenbrink particularly drew attention […]

‘Music was the writing tool to give me courage for this daunting task’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Stephen Weinstock

My guest this week is another returner to the series, which is rather appropriate as the concern of his book series is reincarnation. He is a composer, pianist and dance accompanist for musical theatre with the UC Berkeley, Princeton, Juilliard, and the ‘Fame’ school. Last time he guested here he wrote about the hidden structures […]

Self-editing masterclass snapshots – do you have a plot or a premise?

This is part of an ongoing series of the smartest questions from my Guardian self-editing masterclass for novelists. Previous posts have discussed how much extra material we might write that never ends up in the book, or handling the disappearance of a key character. The full list is here. Today I’m looking at another interesting […]