More on Editing and The NWS

A week or so ago, I posted some reflections on editing - and the way that reading for the New Writers' Scheme made me think about the process.

A week from today is the closing date for all entries to the NWS scheme and so the last chance for anyone who is a member of the RNA to get a professional critique from this service. I've probably done almost all my reading for this year, so I've been reflecting on what the submissions I've received have shown me about the number of people trying to write for Harlequin Mills & Boon - and believe me there are hundreds, if not thousands, if you include the huge numbers who submit without ever going through the NWS scheme or the RNA.

I've been reading for this scheme for six years now - and the thing that worries me is the number of submissions I get every year who all repeat the same basic mistakes over and over again. A couple of years ago, I did a talk at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference about this - entitled How NOT To Write A Romance.

It was perhaps the most fun of any talks I've ever done. There was a lot of laughter in the lecture room. I know that afterwards a member of staff at the hotel asked if we were really having a conference - because no other conferences they’d ever run had seemed to have so much fun while conferring.

I know my audience enjoyed it - but at the same time I think they got the point. I talked to many people afterwards and they told me that as I made each comment about the very basic mistakes I have found in so many manuscripts they were thinking back over their own work and wondering – ‘Did I do that?’

The thing that worries me is that I have written critiques for scripts this year where I could basically take the comments I made on the very first script I read back in 2000 and almost cut and paste them whole into the critique of some of the ones I’ve read this. (I have to say some because there have been some better ones over the years –and there is one in particular where I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed for the writer.)

Writing category/series/whatever you like to term it romance is nothing like as easy a task as so many many people would have you believe it is. I have more years’ experience of working with books, writing books, buying books (both as a reader and as a professional librarian), studying and criticising books from schooldays through my basic degree and on to my MA, teaching writing at all levels and critiquing through the RNA scheme – and, believe me, writing 50 titles for M&B Modern/Harlequin Presents has been one of the most work-intensive and challenging parts of my career.

The problem with these short romances – the ones the late great Charlotte Lamb called ‘those complicated little books’ is that they are so easy to read that they give the impression that they have just been dashed off in a rush, with very little care or thought. The opposite is more likely to be the case. There is a quote that I have pinned up above my desk – it’s also one that I quote in almost every workshop I ever do and it’s this:

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its
writing.
Enrique Jardiel Poncela

So I thought I’d post some of the How Not to . . talk up here over the next few days. It would be great if it helps someone – it would be even greater if it meant that next year I get to read more than the odd one or two mss without these basic mistakes in them. That way I could hope to help the author a lot more by working with something that actually resembles the sort of thing HMB are actually looking for.

And as special answer to Janet who posted a question on the original post on Editing. I’m sorry, Janet I meant to answer days ago but time ran away with me

Janet said:
The NWS is a great opportunity to have an experienced writer's crit on your work. But sadly once you have had a magazine serial or novel published that writer is no longer eligible for the NWS (even if she is striving to get published by M&B and could really use the advice of an experienced M&B author.)

Will the RNA ever extend the scheme to this category of writers? Offer just the crits maybe

The honest answer, Janet, is that I don’t know. I’m not on the Committee of the RNA where such decisions are made – just a reader for the NWS. But I do suspect that the answer is no – you see the reason why the current NWS membership is capped at around 200 is that there just aren’t enough readers available to do any more. The scheme could be oversubscribed by 100% easily but the number of readers is strictly limited – and they are all professionals who have their own writing commitments and deadlines to fulfil. Writing a good, fair critique takes time and time is something that most professional writers have little enough of as it is. So unless there was a huge increase in the number of volunteers to read for the scheme, I very much doubt that there will be any hope of expanding it in any way.

PS I thought I was finished reading for this year but as I was writing this the postman arrived with yet another NWS script.