Guest Blog - Editing Process Q&A - Trevor Wood
Our next guest author is Trevor Wood, a crime writer who recently won the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award, for his book: ‘The Man on the Street’. The CWA is the UK Crime Writer’s Association and they host yearly awards called The Daggers. This means that Trevor is a veritable celebrity, so I am extremely grateful he agreed to take part!
His new book ‘One Way Street’ came out last week on Thursday the 29th of October, and is a follow up to 'The Man on the Street'. (see details after the interview.
Trevor Wood has lived in Newcastle for 25 years and considers himself an adopted Geordie, though he still can’t speak the language. He's a successful playwright who has also worked as a journalist and spin-doctor for the City Council. Prior to that he served in the Royal Navy for 16 years joining, presciently, as a Writer. Trevor holds an MA in Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) from UEA. His first novel, The Man on the Street, which is set in his home city, was published by Quercus in March 2020. He is represented by Oli Munson at AM Heath.
On to the questions:
Do you send a proposal before a book is accepted? Do you send in an outline first and get that okayed or do you go straight to the full draft?
For my first publishing deal I had already written The Man on the Street. I wrote it as a standalone but the publishers believed it had ‘legs’ as a series and gave me a two-book deal without requiring any outlines for the second book. Once I’d delivered the second bookWhat would you say best practice is in regards to accepting/rejecting edits - is there always a discussion, or do you feel you have to accept all/some of them?
I think you have to be grown-up about it. All the suggested edits come from a good place, everybody involved is trying to make your book the best version it can be. So I take every single suggestion seriously and try to make them work. Sometimes, if I understand the rational for a suggested change but don’t like the proposed solution I’ll change things in a different way than suggested. I’d say I probably end up accepting about 75% of the edits proposed. If I don’t accept things then, when I send back the new draft, I always explain why I don’t think the suggested changes were a good idea or why they don’t work in the context of the rest of the book.
Do you find it hard to embrace the suggestions/changes given?
Not at all. Ultimately I’ve got be happy with the finished book – it’s got my name on it after all - but I think if you have a sympathetic editor then most suggested edits will improve the book.
Thanks so much for taking part in this blog series.
The word on the street is that a rogue batch of Spice - the zombie drug sweeping the inner cities - is to blame, but when one of Jimmy's few close friends is caught up in the carnage, loyalty compels him to find out what's really going on.
One Way Street sees the welcome return of Jimmy Mullen, the homeless, PTSD-suffering, veteran as he attempts to rebuild his life following the events in The Man on the Street.
As his probation officer constantly reminds him: all he needs to do is keep out of trouble. Sadly for him, trouble seems to have a habit of tracking Jimmy down.
Available from Amazon and all good bookstores - click on the book cover to be redirected to Amazon UK.
