At the end of December I was delighted to be awarded a place on the mentoring scheme through Writing East Midlands. Just before Christmas I was advised that the first stage of the process is to submit a short (2,000 words) piece of work and a synopsis that would allow TLC to match me up woth potential suitors.
I wrote the novel I’m working on, “Bloody Bones”, about 2 years ago and started editing it in September. Almost immediately the novel has undergone major deconstruction with numerous chapters removed and new chapters added as I started to look at how the narrative flows (or doesn’t!).
Preparing for my submission to TLC I finally made the decision I had been putting off and cut most of the first 5 chapters (it gave away much of the story in chapter 1 which didn’t seem to be a great advert for building tension) and have just submitted the new chapter 1, the synopsis and also the chapter by chapter outline I use.
In preparing the submission I was very mindful that these pieces of work will determine who I will be matched with for the next year and so I wanted to ensure they gave a fair representation of where I was as a writer and what I was aiming to achieve. Hopefully I’ve succeeded.
