I’m afraid I’ve been a less than conscientious blogger lately – and I plead the double excuse of the holidays (I’ve still had 2 parties this week!) combined with re-writing of elements of A Greater World at the request of my agent before she sends it out again into the world of (it seems to me) cruel and risk averse publishers.

When TIna, my agent, emailed me to ask for the changes, I must admit I was less than thrilled, as I feel as though I’ve been writing it for half my life (ever prone to exaggeration) and was in the midst of the second draft of Kurinji Flowers and enjoying myself and didn’t fancy diving back into 1920s Australia when my head was in 1930s India. However once I buckled down, I really enjoyed it and decided to just go for it. I had doubts about a couple of plot elements but was still wed to the original version when I read it through again. So here’s what I did to get past that. I saved a second version and deleted the part I was unsure about and just started writing, safe in the position of knowing I could revert if needed. I nearly always find that when I do this I never want to go back to Plan A. In fact I have not even looked at the original version since.

I’ve now finished and tomorrow I need to do a complete read through (probably on my Kindle so I won’t be tempted to edit further – I can just highlight problems and make notes) and see if my judgement stands up. I’ve added several new scenes and I hope eradicated areas of “telling not showing” (or as expressed in my old advertising development days – “telling not selling” which at least has the virtue of rhyming….). Let’s hope it has worked and I can send it on its way next week.

My lovely agent, Tina, invited me to the agency’s annual authors’ party this week and it was a great opportunity to meet other authors and Tina’s partner and retired former partner – I seemed to be the only one who was still an unpublished rookie. I really enjoyed hearing about other people’s experiences and finding out about their work. A really enjoyable afternoon.