I discovered once again that I don't just love the research stage and the writing process; I love the editing process. What's the next step? I've made a list of ten more publishers to query. I feel confident knowing that this time I can mail them a stronger version of I'm Just Daisy.
"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies." (Alexis de Tocqueville)
Thursday 18 September 2014
Chapter by Chapter
I've spent the last three weeks editing my chapter book I'm Just Daisy. A kind editor from B.C. critiqued my manuscript for free and offered me some constructive criticism. His two main points were: your prose is too flat and you need to engage your characters more. So, chapter by chapter, I've gone through my manuscript, trying to follow his advice. I cut the final chapter which seemed unnecessary. I added a chapter "The Tea Party" to give the book a bit of humour. I lengthened several scenes, adding dialogue to bring them to life. I added details to every scene to make the story less generic. I've given the main character Daisy a stronger point of reference. Wherever possible, I've tried to re-work important items into the book in later chapters: Daisy's famous butter tarts, a yellow-throated bird that lives in the Muskokas, the confetti that lands in Daisy's hat on her voyage to Canada. The editing process gave me a chance to do further research on the era. I worked in a paragraph about the history of the Model T, Charlie's first automobile.
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