Tag Archives: Developmental editing

AWOL but now returned


I’ve been away from this blog for several weeks now, after all the entries relating to my new book (Spit & Polish). Partly, I wanted to give you lovely people who subscribe to this blog a bit of a breather. Partly, I was recovering from many week away from home base – I was looking after my kids’ cat and had to relocate for weeks. Coming back, I had all of those appointments and other foolishnesses to catch up on. Sucks the brain away.

And finally partly because, when I returned, I decided I couldn’t live without a cat of my own. I adopted one that (of course) required a five hour driving session to his shelter (Furry Tales Rescue) and back (He is big and orange and polydactyl, so I had to have him), followed by the usual buying frenzy and the somewhat more unusual trying to figure out what was wrong with his leg. But we’re getting along and I’m trying to keep him loving me while also helping him learn the rules of the house. He seems to be settling in well. I’ve named him Archy, after the Archy in Archy and Mehitabel, a book I’ve loved for years. (Archy is a cockroach/ beat poet, but with all those extra toes and my Archy’s singing voice, I think it works)

Look at those toes!

So work has taken a bit of a backseat of late. I am just starting the research for the sequel to Spit & Polish, hoping to get it tied up in draft by the end of the year. In-between I have a few editing projects lined up (by all means contact me if you need a developmental editor as I still have some spaces available), plus my usual onslaught of volunteer activities. This feeling like I have to make a contribution is exhausting sometimes, but to be honest most of my commitments are great fun and grist for the writing mill.

I’m now seeking input for the next book – in it, my nursing student, Ruth Maclean, is sent for her rotation to the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital, once known as the Rockwood Asylum. It’s 1947, and treatments for the mentally ill are still pretty basic. The concept of treating mental illness, as versus just hiding its sufferers away, is still new, but the building here was designed by William Coverdale with all the best of intentions, with lots of light and privacy. (It’s not the building’s fault it now is vacant, falling apart, and perhaps haunted.)

Rockwood Asylum

I mean, just look at all those windows! Very unusual at the time for psychiatric hospitals, even more so for asylums for the criminally insane like Rockwood. It’s going to be fun to research more about this building and its inhabitants.

During the time my fictional Ruth is on placement there, there was an existing nursing education program running on site, for Registered Psychiatric Nurses. I can only imagine the tensions between all of the nursing programs in Kingston at the time – the Kingston General Hospital School, the Hotel Dieu School, Queen’s University, and this one. Competition for the best jobs, various comments about discrepancies in programs – this is all familiar to me from my time at Queen’s, where there was still great tension between regular nurses who trained for their RNs, and those that opted for the university program to get their BNSc. Could lead to some interesting interpersonal interludes.

So I’m looking for any information about psychiatric nursing schools, inter school competition, psychiatric care in 1947, and life in Canada in the post-war period. I’d be most grateful if you have any tidbits to share that I could insert into Ruth’s life.

It’s going to be a bit of a challenging time for Ruth again, I’m afraid. Money remains tight, doctors are flirtatious, supervisors are demanding, patients are difficult. Someone may even have an unfortunate “accident.”

I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

You can get a Quick Look at the Museum of Health Care here:

The joys of working with a small press


I’ve been having so much fun! Four years ago, when I published Recycled Virgin, I created Somewhat Grumpy Press, and decided I wanted a Pallas cat to represent it – but then I was coping with the pandemic, a pending move, and my MS, and I realized it was getting beyond me to manage.

So I gave the press to the current very capable publisher, Tim Covell, and he is racing away. He’s taken it into a more professional status, created the official logo, organized all the business bits of the press. The press has a stable of seven authors (so far) and has published eleven books! He’s worked hard to get them into bookstores of the brick and mortar kind as well as the online sources. It takes a lot of legwork.

I don’t know about you, but I find this impressive, given the pandemic, Tim’s other projects, and his full-time job.

In my travels as an author, I’ve also had the chance to meet Anne O’Connell of OC Publishing, and Cathy Mackenzie, of Writing Wicket. They also all run small presses and they all really work hard for their authors. It makes me want to support them.

And it makes it fun to do promotion for me and our books. I hate doing promotional things, but there’s something much more pleasant when you feel well-looked after by your publisher. I know my books are important to SGP, and that’s a feeling it’s hard to get from larger publishers, if you can even get them to publish your books. (He’s trying to get me to do TikTok, though, and I am not persuaded…but at least I can argue…and he’s done good promotion for Spit & Polish to date.)

There are lots of fraudsters out there – do check Predators and Editors and Writer Beware to be sure you are with a good publisher – but I highly recommend the small press experience. You may have to pay for some services (fair enough, given the time these things take), but as long as you take care, it’s well worth it. Do be careful of the presses who demand lots of money upfront, or people who offer services with an additional cost (like offering to film YouTube things for you as a high cost). You need to do your homework.

It’s important, too, to do your work beforehand – write your very best, get it edited a few times, get it in good shape, then contact the publisher. They don’t take every offering – their time is limited, too – but it’s likely you will get a friendlier response than the depths of silence often received from the larger presses.

I’ve recently taken training from the Editorial Freelancers Association and Queen’s University in developmental and structural editing. I’ve edited 5 books to date and so far they’ve been well-accepted. I’ve got two more pending and one in its final stages, but I might have room for editing your writing – if you need a developmental editor, please contact me, and we can talk. I’d love to help you turn your project into a successful book. You can reach me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and through here.

Have you had experiences with small publishers? Editors? Was it good? Bad? Indifferent?

On the joys (?) of revision


Photo by KoolShooters on Pexels.com

“Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”
―Bernard Malamud

So went the quotation in my email from Writers.com. (I highly recommend this newsletter, btw) I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, adjusting prose to make it clearer and more bright, to enhance the emotions in your first draft, to make your words sing – that can be pleasurable. I personally like the hack and burn part of revision, too, where you look through your tome and realize this bit AND that bit, and also the other bit, could really be thrown to the wolves (or if decent, tucked into a file for use later).

But I am licking my wounds a bit. My publisher has sent out advance review copies of my book to people and of course (probably my fault as I was pushing for release), it went out with multiple typos in it. People have noticed and commented. Sigh. One or two (you know who you are, DP!) helped me find the more egregious ones. Bless them.

Since it was exposed to some of the masses, my publisher and I have gone back and forth and back and forth, correcting things — but I’m certain little errors remain. I’m equally sure some eagle-eyed readers will find them and helpfully point them out to me so that I can revise it again.

All of which leads me to the conclusion that I will hire a copyeditor for my next book. Editors are good things (of course I would say this, being one myself). They can see things that the author misses in all sorts of places. I love my editing work. It gives me the chance to REALLY read a story, see it in its wholeness, try to help the author bring forward what they want. I’ve had great pleasure in my editing jobs – I do mostly developmental and line editing, which doesn’t require me to copyedit. Phew.

Because I realize the limit of my capabilities. I am not a copyeditor. I need helpful eyes for this. And my glasses aren’t doing it.

So, just to liven things up a bit, I will send a surprise to anyone who spots a typo in the officially released Spit & Polish book. Send me a message here, and I’ll contact you. What will it be, the surprise? Well, you will just have to wait and see…

Meantime, why not join me today, February 27, 2024, for an interview about the book and the writing process (I imagine there will be some shuffling in shame about errors), today at 4 pm AT, 5PM Eastern, 12noon Pacific on Youtube, Facebook, etc. Or you can watch me and the wonderful Anne O’Connell of OC Publishing on her YouTube channel later. It’s so generous of Anne to have me on. If you watch the show, look through her other interviews, too. She is a very generous and interested interviewer.

And don’t forget to pre-order your discount ebook before the official release date of February 29, 2924. After that things will be full price… Check out Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, and more. The paperback will be available February 29th everywhere – just ask your local store to order in a copy for you. Or you can order directly from Somewhat Grumpy Press, too. I do hope you enjoy it!

Learning Editing


I’ve recently decided to use my writing and editing experience and years and years of writing classes and conferences to start a side hustle of editing. Well, it’s not really a side hustle. Since I’ve been sidelined by MS, my regular hustles have faded into the mists of time, and while I’m just finishing up my second novel, that doesn’t bring in the millions I’d envisioned as a writer in grade 4. Royalties are somewhat less…

Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

So editing will have to be a main hustle.

I’m the sort who wants to ensure I have the right qualifications to do a job, so I’ve been taking classes from the Editorial Freelancers Association, and I’d like to highly recommend them. They make my brain kick over and that’s a good thing.

Those of you who do editing know how lovely it can be to edit someone’s writing who writes well. Just a couple of nudges here and there, mainly facilitated by the fresh set of eyes, and it’s all happiness and light. I love that.

But editing the bad writer – well, I’ve had experience with that, too, and it isn’t as happy as the above. It’s so hard to apply correction without sounding like that Grade 8 teacher who demanded you copy their discussion exactly. It’s also hard not to take over sometimes, try to fix things, especially when the writer you are working with is begging you to do so.

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels.com

I edited a friend’s book recently and inserted in the document this comment, “Consider adding more to this activity to raise the tension”, only to get the revised document back with my exact words typed into that space. Sigh.

Of course this is an easy way to see whether the author you are working with actually is reading your comments, I suppose. And there is the joy of taking a manuscript forward to make it better, especially when the writer sees it themselves and charges forward on their own. I love that, too.

In any case, this course I’m taking on Developmental Editing has given me all sorts of tips about how to tackle stories good and bad. It’s changing my own novel, too, as I apply the techniques to it. I’m adding the things I’m learning to those I’ve gathered from my existing experience writing several published articles and stories, editing several novels, and judging contests for Bony Blithe, the 3day Novella, Atlantic Writing Competition, and more. Outside of my fiction work, I’ve written and edited non-fiction, research reports, press releases and media campaigns. I’m also a retired nurse and epidemiologist.

Need some writing edited? I’d love to help you out! Contact me at dorothyanneb at gmail.com or through Somewhat Grumpy Press.