Starlings Reborn

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amwriting, books, Brighton, Brighton Pier, characters, ebooks, inspiration, locations, piers, publishing, Revenge Ink, seaside, self-publishing, starlings, writing, writing practice

I’m on Brighton Pier in the half term holidays. The skies are white with low cloud and there’s a sea mist blowing in but it’s warm enough to be outside so I’m sitting at one of the tucked away tables by Horatio’s Bar. Their playlist is quiet enough to ignore as are the distant screams of children as they hurtle through the air on the twirling aeroplanes of the nearest ride. My youngest and his friend are finally old enough to go on rides on their own so I’ve got them all areas wristbands and have settled down for a couple of hours of writing.

Brighton Pier has a lot of memories for me. I came here as a kid then brought my kids and since I started writing it has always inspired me and often features as a setting in my work. It’s a haven for detail; competing, smells, sounds, lights, people of all types from babies in prams to pensioners with walking sticks, smiling children hopped up on sugar, hungover stags and hens, parents, grandparents, teenagers trying to be cool. I had a little walk around the hidden bits, the alleyways between the rides, the end behind the Turbo, because that’s what I did when I was writing my first book, Starlings. I’m feeling nostalgic. Starlings is entirely set in Brighton. I wrote it when I first moved here and it helped me get a handle on my new home, I wanted to really get into the nitty gritty of the lesser-seen aspects of a British seaside town, to explore it as I would a character. Brighton has a personality that changes day to day, very different in the height of summer to a rainy day in December. I spent a lot of time seeking out the more unusual locations or looking at the well-known ones from a different angle. One of my proudest moments was at an event when a Brightonian reader exclaimed surprise that I wasn’t born and bred because I’d got it spot on.

The reason for all this nostalgia is that Starlings will very shortly be out of print. I bought the remainder paperbacks from my publisher and I’ll be getting all the rights back very soon. This makes me both sad and hopeful. Starlings was my first book and I had no idea what had to be done to market it to readers. For me it was a huge achievement that it was published at all but I’ve always thought it didn’t live up to its full potential. I’d like to give it a re-edit and a cover make-over. I have plans to publish a new edition paperback and release it on ebook and I know a lot more about publishing now than I did then. It’s seven years since it came out, my publisher, Revenge Ink, was a gutsy little maverick trying to showcase the type of books being ignored by the mainstream (if anything this situation has got worse and the industry has got more blinkered in what it chooses to publish). I am forever grateful to Revenge Ink for trying, for taking on my little book because they really understood and believed in it and we part on very good terms.

People still buy Starlings, they come up to me at readings and say they’ve just discovered it and ask why I was so mean to Barney. I’m asked to local book groups on a regular basis and it’s still in the Brighton books section of the city’s bookstores. I’ll be peddling the ‘limited edition’ originals at book fairs and market stalls until I run out (or hell freezes over). If you want a signed copy, personally dedicated by the author email me at erinnamettler@gmail.com or look out for me at car boot sales, a copy is yours at the knockdown price of £5 plus p & p.

‘This is the last bench in Brighton. To the left of it are the rickety legs of the Mousetrap. At the height of summer they rattle constantly under the weight of the mouse-shaped cars that whizz along to the screams of happy tourists. On this day they only shudder slightly in the wind.’ 

Now we’re off for fish n chips.

 

Listen To Your Editor

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amwriting, anthologies, books, craft, creative writing, criticism, crowdfunding, ediotrs, editing, feedback, Fifteen Minutes, publishing, Rattle Tales, short stories, short story collections, The Brighton Prize, writing

I am currently co-editing an anthology of short fiction. I also supplement my paltry writers’ income with freelance editing projects. I’m not a proof reader; the edits I offer are structural, though I will pick up on any punctuation that has gone awry.  Editing is something I enjoy. The idea of helping a writer to perfect their work makes me happy but I also find that editing other people’s work makes me a better writer. Editing not only raises my awareness of common writing pitfalls, it also reminds me to put away the resistance to criticism that all writers experience.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been on the receiving end of dedicated and improving edits for both my books. Uppermost in my mind is my collection of short stories, Fifteen Minutes, which has recently undergone several in-depth edits with Unbound Publishing. This was an amazing learning curve and the book is vastly improved as a result. When the first edit arrived I opened a manuscript which was literally covered in red marks and comments. My editor had forewarned me that this was normal in her email but even so it was quite a shock. I have had short stories edited professionally before, for publication in journals like Rip Tide and The Manchester Review. The editors of those journals did brilliant job and, yes, each manuscript was covered in crossings out, with sentences shifted and lengthy comments inserted. Again, I was a bit shocked by the extent of the mark-ups.  For a moment I wondered if the writing was any good after all.

This seems to be a common experience for most writers. When faced with a manuscript covered in mark-ups and comments we tend to take it personally. The self-doubt nags, we mutter things under our breath like, ‘obviously they haven’t read it properly,’ and, ‘they wouldn’t know a joke if it got up and bit them.’ What we forget is that as writers we can become too immersed in a piece to see the flaws and the gaps. The writing is obviously great or it wouldn’t have been selected for publication. However, the editor has read it more closely than anyone else ever will. Their mark-ups don’t mean that the writing isn’t good, just that as the writer we have become too used to what we have written. We think that because we can picture it in our head our readers will be able to too. This is not always the case. If an editor points something out as not being clear, and you have to use a paragraph to explain to them why it is clear, the editor is right and you are not.

Obviously editors are not infallible. This is why they often work in pairs. The first edit of Fifteen Minutes suggested alterations that the second editor then suggested should be changed back. At this point it was up to me to decide which worked best. Often it was the original – but not always – sometimes it was something completely different. You can always negotiate. If you truly believe that your piece is better without the changes, that the reader you have in mind will know exactly what you mean, then go ahead, argue your case. What is interesting is that as you progress in your career you will get comments such as ‘still not clear’ from a professional editor a third or fourth time no matter how much you plead. If this happens you have no choice but to adhere to their suggestion. If you are arguing about the placement of commas and the cutting of single words you are being too precious. Go with what the editor suggests; it’s what they do for a living. They know what they are talking about. The real shock will come when you get your proofs back and realize you know nothing about punctuation!

For further information on my freelance editing services please email erinnamettler@gmail.com I specialize in shaping up short stories for publication or competition but I have edited full-length manuscripts from children’s books to spy thrillers.