SELF-PUBLISHING WORKSHOP SUCCESS

On Tuesday 4^th December Candy Jar Books hosted its first self-publishing workshop. Twenty participants attended the day, which had sessions on editing, social marketing, cover design and how to get started as a self-published author. The course was fully booked and participants came from all over South Wales to learn about self-publishing from the Candy Jar team.

Some of our workshop participants and South Wales Short Story Competition winners
(L-R Carly Holmes, Laura Foakes, Stella Wells, Jane Fraser and Noelle Bryant)

The day was a great success, with participants leaving glowing comments:

“Thank you once again for giving me the opportunity to attend yesterday's workshop.

It was motivational to hear from other writers and has certainly given me much to think about.”

Laura Foakes

“By the way, forgot to say a big 'thank you' for putting on the workshop and what you are doing. How kind of you - lunch, opportunity to have some work read and feedback etc.”  

Beverley Lennon

“Thank you so much for putting on such an interesting and thought provoking workshop yesterday! It was lovely to meet you all as well. Despite feeling a bit under the weather with a sore throat I really enjoyed the day, and it's given me plenty to think about!”

Carly Holmes

As the day was such a success, we hope to run a similar workshop in 2013 – watch this space!

SELF-EDITING - PREPARING YOUR WORK FOR SUBMISSION

Self-editing is a quintessential part of making your writing look polished and professional. It can be a tedious task, but the following tips will make it all worth your while. 

Most publishers will expect your work to be pre-edited to a certain standard before submission. The final stage of self-editing is not about elements such as character development or plot; that should have been done already. It’s about stylistic mechanics such as the overall layout, spelling mistakes and repetition. There are several things to bear in mind when editing your own work.

1. Firstly, you need to distance yourself from your writing. Set it down for an hour or two before you begin.

2. Once you've given yourself this much needed space, print your work off. When reading a hard copy you are far more likely to pick up on obvious spelling and grammar mistakes. 

3. A good place to start is by looking at the visual layout of your writing. Bear in mind that a whole page without a break is uninviting to the reader. Are there paragraphs in appropriate places? Is speech appropriately indented? Look at existing published work to get an idea of what a finished novel looks like.

4. Once you've done this it will be easier to read your work aloud, which allows you to see how your writing flows. If you stumble over words or phrases, then you know what parts to rewrite. This will also inform you whether you’re using the most appropriate word for the piece. 

5. When self-editing you must check for unintentional repetition and emphasis; you don’t want an excess of exclamation marks and italics cluttering up your writing. You should also cut out the clichés and replace them with more original descriptions of your own. 

6. Finally, after reading your piece as a whole you should completely dissect it. Read it sentence by sentence, analysing whether each word conveys your intended point. Rewrite extraneous words or phrases and importantly, remember to vary sentence structure and check for consistency.

Thorough self-editing should leave you with a smooth and refined piece of writing. 

Robyn Paul