The Lemay Leveller – where it’s at!

Hello again!  Last time I blogged I was rather cranky about housing.  Whilst I am still rather cranky about housing, and many more things too, this time I’m here to give a quick update on the progress of my book.  And I’m not cranky 🙂

At the moment I’m working on reworking the ending.  And my lovely editor, Elly, is working on an earlier section.  We’re sort of leapfrogging each other in work, she does a section, then I do a section, then she does a section.  Obviously we are working off a full manuscript of about 160,000 words that took me several years to write, so to me this feels like the final leg of a long journey.

I cannot praise Elly’s work highly enough!  She gets my writing style and where it’s strong and where it’s weaker and she helps me keep my focus on clarity throughout.  Working with her is definitely making me a better writer all around.  I’ve realised I’m never going to feel like a “finished writer” because it is a craft that you are constantly improving upon as long as you do it.  I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning how to improve.  As for my part in the editing, and particularly the reworking of the end, I have been able to sketch out how I can improve the book because I had some distance from it.  I went from working on it every day for several years to having a few months off.  Picking it up again to read and edit after that time away allowed me to see it with fresh eyes, and I’m very glad for that.  Elly will complete her edits by the end of September, and I should be finished making all the necessary corrections and final polishing up by the end of October.  At which point, I’ll be ready to go!  It’s going to be amazing to start 2016 with this done and dusted.

Many of you might know I was at the amazing thing that is Colchestersoup Friday the 10th July.  It was a really wonderful evening and I’m already looking forward to the next Soup in September.  I was given so much support I feel very humbled and encouraged by it, and I’m that much more determined to make the book as great as I possibly can, just to merit so much kindness and faith.  Some great ideas and opportunities are coming out of that event, both for me and for many other people!  Colchester is lucky to have people good enough to be this galvanising force.

Thank you for reading and also for all the support I’m receiving.  Sometimes I find it feels presumptuous to hope, but I deeply believe that the best any of us can do is our best, and we are obliged to at least try to do so.  That’s all I’m doing.  If you’d like to help with the costs involved in this book, please see my gofundme page.  If you have any questions about the book or the costs I am incurring please just ask.

To close I’ll say that I hope all of you reading this are well and life is being kind to you.  And best of luck to all of your awesome projects happening out there!  I’m seeing a lot of people doing a lot of interesting, helpful things and I’m proud to count so many of you as friends.

~ by erinsummers on July 13, 2015.