{"id":1335,"date":"2012-03-27T23:47:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T23:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=1335"},"modified":"2012-03-27T23:47:41","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T23:47:41","slug":"a-most-critical-two-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=1335","title":{"rendered":"A Most Critical Two Weeks?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who read the post from a couple of weeks ago ‘Out of the Chaos \u00e2\u20ac\u201d A Manuscript’<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0might be wondering, in the style of a minor cliffhanger, what was\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>the verdict on the 174,000 words that I believed I’d pieced together in a somewhat desperate and incoherent dash to meet my reader’s deadline.<\/p>\n

The verdict has now been delivered and, to my surprise, it appears I’ve been overdoing the \u00c2\u00a0mental self-flagellation. I received a\u00c2\u00a0report on the manuscript, followed up with a face-to-face meeting, that was, overall, very encouraging.<\/p>\n

In fact, it was my professional reader’s opinion that with about two weeks of solid work I could craft the whole novel into a shape that would be of a standard to send out to agents – which is fantastic. This ought to\u00c2\u00a0certainly\u00c2\u00a0silence my inner-critic — the one that must have been responsible for the post dwelling on the manuscript’s shortcomings.<\/p>\n

Of course, those two weeks are full-time writing work. This doesn’t include my current day-job, nor the hours sitting on a train I use to travel to it (as I’m doing now) – or family or social life. But, then again, I suppose it’s only seven solid weekends.<\/p>\n

Before going into a little more detail I should reveal (now she’s said fairly nice things about it) that it was\u00c2\u00a0Emma Sweeney<\/a>, who ploughed through the huge Word file and reported her findings.<\/p>\n

Emma taught us at the very end of the City University Certificate in Novel Writing when Emily had left a few weeks before the end of term on maternity leave.<\/p>\n

(As an aside, the Certificate in Novel Writing has now been revised and relaunched as ‘The Novel Studio’<\/a> with its first incarnation in this form starting in the autumn — Emily, who’s now Course Director is taking applications now and I know she’s made changes partly based on feedback from alumni so promises to be a great experience. Emma Sweeney<\/a> is part of the teaching team on the new course.)<\/p>\n

Emma also works individually with writers (see link to Emma’s blog<\/a>). I know a couple of course-mates from City University have used her services as a mentor since the end of the course — Bren Gosling has mentioned this in his blog (see link on sidebar) and his first novel, ‘Sweeping Up The Village’, was recently short-listed for a literary award, the Harry Bowling Prize.<\/p>\n

Emma’s blog also mentions that she performs manuscript appraisals. \u00c2\u00a0For me, an unavoidable side-effect of having workshopped the novel in and out of various courses over the past two years meant that most people I knew who might cast an eye over the coalescing manuscript (course-mates, tutors and other very helpful readers)\u00c2\u00a0would already have more knowledge of it than they might ever have wanted — and would remember the history of its development.<\/p>\n

What I needed was someone to read it with a fresh eye — which Emma was able to do but also with some prior knowledge of my writing (see Onwards and Upwards<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So, after a few delays and postponements, I finally sent Emma the novel as it stood, with all its imperfections. She turned it round very quickly — in just over 6 working days — which is impressive for a manuscript of that length.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it was clear, both from her report and from our subsequent discussion, that Emma had read the novel carefully — which isn’t always the case with creative writing classes and tutors. Of course, this reading was a professional arrangement, which has a not insignificant cost to the writer, although\u00c2\u00a0this isn’t surprising\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>if one considers the time taken to attentively reading that many pages. It’s very unusual to get more than 5,000 words read at one time by a tutor, even on advertised novel-writing courses.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, I was amazed that Emma thought the manuscript itself was in much better shape than my doom-laden forewarnings had suggested. While some of the material was \u00c2\u00a0hastily cut and pasted as rough drafts were re-arranged and intercut and sections that had heretofore only existed in my head were written down in skeletal, first-draft form, the combined whole was adequate (in conjunction with the more polished bulk of the novel) to give a decent account of the plot and characters at least.<\/p>\n

But — did Emma think it was any good?\u00c2\u00a0Well, yes she did — and said some very positive things which I won’t dwell on here — but she added some significant caveats about issues that have to be addressed in those two weeks of revision. Issues like:<\/p>\n