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Today is my last day blogging. All good things must come to an end.

For a writer there is nothing more satisfying than typing THE END at the completion of thousands of words. But of course when you write those two words it isn’t actually the end of the book. I’d like to say I’m a writer who writes 50, 000 words and never has to see them again, edit them, fine tune, picking each word apart until it’s as perfect as I can get. But I’m not. And I’m not sure if there are any writers out there who can do this. Lucky them if they are like this.

But typing the end is in lots of ways the beginning. You’ve written your story, now it’s time to rehash it, analyse each word, the plot, the reactions of the characters, are they in line with their backstory and how they should react. What’s missing, plot holes, are they even wearing the same clothes they were wearing at the beginning of the scene. I once finished a book an on editing found that somewhere along the line my heroine had changed her hair color – and no she hadn’t had a dye job!

There’s lots of tools to keep track of these things, and over the years I’ve learned – by mistake and hard work – that it’s imperative that I know what they wear, eye color, hair color, height etc, so that I don’t make boo boo’s like that again.

Then is the grammar right. For me, unfortunately I think I must have been away from school the day they taught grammar and punctuation, but I’m getting there, just don’t ask me about past participles and so on!

For me, I tend to edit until it’s done, but this usually is about 3-5 read throughs. I also have
wonderful critique partners who will read my work offering their feedback. Some times I don’t agree, but mostly I do, and so changes are made.

In the end though, it’s my story. My way. And it lives, or dies on that.

As I said earlier in the week, I received notification this week of a contract for my 11th book. But there are another 5 in my computer files, waiting for attention, editing, more of that fine-tuning. It all takes time. But what it takes more I think is determination, a thick skin, and a sense of goal.

You have to get up in the morning, with a goal in mind. It might be to write one page, 50 pages, half an hour, or five hours. But whatever that goal is, you MUST do it. Because if you don’t try, you’ll never, have the chance to write – THE END.

I wish everyone every success with their reading and for the writers out there the joy of writing one day soon….THE END.

Happy reading and writing everyone

Jane Beckenham