Editing Sickness

All this editing and rewriting has given me a terrible and woeful illness. My eye is so trained at looking for the multiple grammatical errors in my work, that everywhere around me, I keep spotting them.
I realised the extent of my illness, when a friend showed me a photo invitation to an engagement party. Above the party details were some words that had been romantically scrawled into the sand- "Will you marry me Lisa", with a love heart at each end. All I noticed was an absent question mark!
Similar things keep happening all over the place- shop signs, school notes. It's a terrible illness I tell you.
It made me appreciate what it might be like to be an editor. After an hour of being out and about in public, you would be on your knees begging the world to please dot their i's, and begin a new paragraph, goddamn it.

"Hi, my name is Natalie and I'm an Editor"

Re:Write

I know I deserve to pat myself on the back (with an awkwardly bent arm) because, tuh-dah, I got my first rewrite finished....and it was in the school holidays to boot. Triumph! Glory! Large gold plastic trophy to moi!
But, actually I have to confess, that in pointing to that reasonable achievement I am hiding from you the fact that I now know the story needs some...ahem...major rewriting. Hmmmm. I guess I was fantasizing that rewriting is just fixing up little grammatical errors and adding bits your silly old self forgot to put in. But no, my rewrite pointed a large halogen floodlight on the weak points of my story. Yes, that was plural flaws.
So I have spent the last of the holidays telling myself I am too busy to write because whenever I ponder my next rewrite, I am completely stumped about where I would begin.
Tomorrow my children are back at school and there are no more excuses. All I can try is to treat my next rewrite like a creaming soda bottle exploding in your kitchen- it's not important where you begin, just grit your teeth and start mopping.

Writers Festival

Last Saturday my head nearly exploded, but in a nice way.

I attended the 5th Annual Children's and Young Adult Literature Festival at Rozelle in Sydney.
This event was described as 'a craft festival with discussion, panels, networking, insights into kids' and young adult publishing from editors, authors, playwrights and illustrators.'
Yep, it's a smorgasbord alright! After an opening talk by the wonderful author Gabrielle Lord (whose Conspiracy 365 series has every kid around my neighbourhood, and several adults hooked)we made our way into one of two rooms, to enjoy various talks by industry people.
I could go on all day with names and subjects, but we'll just say it was all really interesting, informative and best of all, inspiring.
At the end of the day they had two exciting things running consecutively. In one room you could pitch your story to two publishers/editors and an agent. In the other room, you could have a page (1st) of your story assessed/critiqued by a reviewer, publisher and author. Exciting but intensely nerve wracking! Being my first festival there, I chose the less scary idea of submitting a page, whose assessment was very valuable.
At the end of the day, you can relax (NOT!) on the veranda with all these same industry people. This in itself is a little terrifying. I felt rather like a chocoholic let loose in a Lindt factory- drooling and dazed!
All in all, a great day with loads of opportunities for networking and learning. I shall definitely return and do so with a well rehearsed pitch, as my friend got two publishing offers from doing just that. Well done Jodie!