Love Writing
What do I love about writing? For me, it stems from the research. Discovering an interesting fact, delving deeper, getting side-tracked, finding more information.
Eventually a story emerges, which begs to be told.
Matilda, featured in the photo opposite, looks smart and prosperous. She 'thought well of herself', as they say in Yorkshire, and never went out without a good coat & hat. Herbert had his own business as a blacksmith and did very well until motorised transport superseded the horse. But by then he was ready to retire.
Life hadn't always been rosy for Matilda though. Her mother died when Matilda was only 8, her elder brother was shot dead two years later and within twelve months her father remarried and started another family. Driven away by a rather mean-looking stepmother (yes I have a photo) Matilda left her family home to join the nineteenth-century migration from rural villages to burgeoning towns and became a humble mill girl in Bradford ...
Love Editing
It was during the editing of my first book that I discovered the benefits of having a professional editor polish that cherished and agonised-over manuscript. Not just a fresh pair of eyes to spot spelling, grammatical & punctuation mistakes (and of course typos!) but someone reading the words for the first time and querying just what was meant by them. 'Did you really mean that? Please clarify.' And 'yes, this is interesting but is it relevant? Can it be cut without losing the sense of what you’re trying to convey?'
I’d already completed some training with the (then) SfEP (Society for Editors and Proofreaders) and had embarked upon a new freelance career: writing copy for websites, proofreading website content and such like, and had started some proofreading projects for a non-fiction publisher. Might I progress to editing, I wondered.
Well as it turned out, with a good eye for detail and a fairly comprehensive grasp of spelling, grammar and punctuation, yes I might. However, it was a steep learning curve and I knew I’d benefit from more training and mentoring. Plus I’m always keen to improve my skills and give the best possible service to my clients. I undertook some editing training with the (now) CIEP (Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading) and was successful in being accepted first as an Intermediate and then upgrading to Professional Member. There’s always more to learn of course – not least that editing is never an exact science and that despite an editor’s best efforts, the proofreader will ALWAYS find something!
Of course, there's an added bonus to my work: I get to read a great variety of interesting books for free. Check here to see some of the titles I've worked on over the past year!
Love Genealogy
