Wet Weather and Getting Bashed

 

What weather have we had this week? As I write this on Thursday lunchtime, the wind is blowing, and the rain is lashing down, as it has been all night long. It is certainly not the weather for sitting outside in my favourite place for my lunchtime writing session.

Thursday is my usual day to start the week's blog piece. It somewhat disrupts the novel writing, but I'm sure I will catch up with that sitting in my armchair. That will be after my right shoulder has been bashed around at the Chiropractor this evening. I have a rotator cuff injury. I also idly said I would get into the loft to get the Christmas decorations down. You can see that this writing lark can be quickly interrupted.

 

At last Saturday's novel writing workshop, we talked about editing our books. As I wrote last week, mine is approaching the end, and the next piece of work for it will be an extensive edit in the new year.

One of the things that we did discuss was publishers' house styles. Thankfully, we had an editor online who could give us the latest thoughts from publishers.

Numbers could be clearer in writing. I have followed the rule where the numbers 1 to 9 are written as numbers, and from ten onwards, they are written as words. The publishers now require one to a hundred written out and a number written from thereon.

OK, simple? No, OK, and Ok are OK, depending on the publisher. OK is not under any circumstances. Is that OK?

How about whilst? That is something I am prone to use; I very nearly used it in a sentence earlier in this piece. No, it must be, while. All 'st endings are not de rigour.

A simple find and replace cannot solve these, so it will have to be a trawl through the novel manuscript to find them.

Next week, I'd like to talk about my writing goals for 2024, the first few months of which will be hectic.