Editing is a vitally important part of writing. They say that great books aren’t written, they are re-written. But of course you have to have something to edit, and that is why the creation of the first draft is called “getting your shit down”.
I’m having some problems with my email in that mails are going into my junk folder even when the sender is a VIP. In today’s trawl through my junk folder I found a free exhibition by the Bodleian Library called “Write Cut Rewrite”. I’m definitely going to go. Who wouldn’t want to understand the editing processes of authors like Jane Austen, Ian Fleming, Raymond Chandler, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, James Joyce, and John Le Carré?
The exhibition runs from 29th February 2024 until 5th January 2025. It’s in the Treasury at Weston Library which is on the corner of Broad Street and Parks Road in Oxford. It is curated by the Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History at the University of Oxford, Dirk Van Hulle, and Mark Nixon, Professor of Modern Literature and Beckett Studies at the University of Reading. For fans of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse, The White Horse is next door.
I posted recently about the outlining process, and I’ll be back to that as soon as I’ve posted this. I’m finding the writing of The Favourite Murder hugely enjoyable, but there is so much real history to weave my plot through that the outline is vital. I’m using Scrivener to structure the chapters and scenes and write synopses of each.
I am printing my first draft as I go, and putting it in a folder. Claire has started reading and editing, but there’s been a hiatus whilst she read the latest Robert Galbraith. I really can’t guess how long it will take to complete this fifth book in the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures, but I’m hoping it will be the best yet.