Self-Edit course - all done

And although the group - which was a huge and unanticipatedly beneficial  part of the experience - and the exercises and the feedback will remain accessible for ever, to be continued for as long as we want it to - is still functioning; the input of Debi Alper as tutor is no more.  Emma Darwin's vast store of common-sense advice and writing wisdom can, of course, be accessed via 'This Itch of Writing'

So there is a certain bereftness, a sadness that it's all over.  And also an eagerness to put to good use what I've learned, which has been considerable.

And I can thoroughly recommend the course as a way  to proceed once you've got that ms to the point where you think it might be done:  http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/Self-Editing.html

Self-editing - last post

Six weeks has flown by, usefully and enjoyably.  And worth every penny, for the friends made, the insights and skills learnt and for the fact that I now know where to take my book next, and why.
Debi Alper asks questions.  Difficult questions that I can, for a while, ignore, hands over ears, muttering "yes but ..."
In the end it's not so much that I can't ignore as it becomes so bloody obvious.  A 'light bulb moment' as she is fond of saying.

Self-editing ... six weeks of it.

Tomorrow I start a six-week online Self-editing your novel course - http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/Self-Editing.html

It's taken me three years to realise (accept) that I need help.  Not entirely arrogance, although there's a bit of 'shouldn't my book be all my own work?, and I have been aware of each succeeding book that I am improving.
I probably wouldn't have been so enthusiastic either had I not already come across Emma Darwin and her superb and empowering'This Itch of Writing' blog, and done a couple of workshops with Debi Alper at last September's Festival of Writers, run by the folks who organise the courses.
I did, of course, read one novel by each of them - they certainly practice what I hope they'll preach.

Psychic Distance

Probably the best, i.e. most useful/exciting, workshop of the lot at York, for me, was Debi Alper talking about Psychic Distance.

Debi and Emma Darwin spend an entire week on the topic in their six week on-line course 'Self-editing your novel', which runs three or four times a year via the Writer's Workshop, but even the single example she made us attempt was an eye-opener.  And not only for writing, but reading too - I could recognise Psychic  Distance in action in Lesley Glaister's writing, and now know that it is one of the main reasons books totally fail to sparkle.

More information here:
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/psychic-distance-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it.html

More useful, by far, than just listening was being told to do an exercise using Psychic  Distance.  We were given ten minutes in which to describe the reaction of a soldier just returned from war as he meets his father for the first time, handing him a photograph:

Steps.  Five of them.  Will I be able to manage them, with half a leg and the other barely functioning?  I’ll look bloody silly if I fall, land on my arse.  

Though it wouldn't be the first time he’d’ve seen my fucking arse either, from what Ma said.  Then I had all my fucking bits too ... but O Christ ... he doesn’t have a fucking clue who I am.

I grope for the photograph, leaning on the concrete wall, half my mind taken up in the looking at him.

Although I do already use it instinctively, it was hard to do, and the follow-up - the ignorant father's response, even harder:

Another wounded soldier.

You can only do so much, and this one so young, no more than twenty, twenty-two perhaps.  The age that ...

No.  Impossible ... even though his eyes are so like Mary’s.  So very much like hers, blue of cornflower.  Too long since they smiled at me.  I was a bloody, bloody fool ...

What?

What’s this? ... A photograph?... Mary ... oh Mary.

York day 2

Didn't get back to sleep after 3 a.m. wakening so some of the day was a little blurred at the edges.
But Adele Parks address was so stimulating that I did not suffer for long - as she said herself, a ballsy, go-getting lady who has certainly put the effort in and deserves everything she's achieved.
Then I got waylaid by buying books ... whoops.
But one was by Adam Close, who I belatedly realised was Eve Seymour, who so kindly commented yesterday on my wip and who did an excellent workshop on 'Crime and Pacing' - in an over-WARM room (a rarity).
Second highlight of the day - and sufficient to revive me when I was flagging - was Debi Alper's 'Psychic Distance' - basically the best way to add life to writing and lack of it the reason so many books fall flat.  I'd bought one of her books too ...
And the evening Gala Dinner and much wine and conversation ...
                                                                          ... and so to bed.