First round of edits for Hollywood

My first round of edits for my Hollywood book for Carina have landed. This is good in that it means I have something writing related to do to hopefully distract me from wondering what my other publisher thinks about Man Drought. And also gives me time to try to work out which book I want to write next.

What I find most fascinating about my Carina edits is the words/phrases I’m asked to change because they are too Aussie. It’s strangely fascinating because I’d never have thought of myself as having a particularly Aussie slang dialogue – my family is British and I think this has influenced a lot of my speaking habits, at least I thought it had.

Words I’ve had to change this time have been mostly colloquialisms: naff, grotty, swish to name but a few. And of course there’s the mums to moms, the car park to parking lots, rubbish to trash, etc, etc, etc. I don’t have to change EVERYTHING, I have an Aussie heroine in LA so get to keep some of her dialect true-blue, but I have to change anything that may completely jar the international reader, thus taking them out of the story. Most of the edits this time are reasonably small changes like the stuff mentioned above, but there are a few overall plot points that need enhancing.

It’s funny that the four things my editor mentioned, were all things that I instantly agreed with. I think if I’m honest, I knew them deep down but wasn’t sure how to fix them. Hopefully now that I’ve had a good amount of time away from this ms (I’ve written a whole ST while waiting for sale, edits, etc), I’ll be able to see how to fix these things more clearly.

I’m slowly establishing my own process for edits – to do the small/easy changes first and then a read through of the whole ms before I tackle the bigger issues. So… that’s my agenda for the week.

What’s on yours?