Robin Pilcher's Blog › Sharpening Up At…

Sharpening Up At Shortbread

Published 9 months ago

When Shortbread first kicked off, the idea was that everyone should get published regardless, and that members were to be relied upon to be the best judges of what was good and what was, well, below average.  Nevertheless, to keep the quality of our stories as high as possible and thus attract the readers, it was decided early on that a certain amount of editing had to be done, mostly by Fiona, and Shortbread has been carrying this out ever since – free gratis.

We have a situation now that too much of Fiona’s time is involved in editing, which prevents her from doing much more fun things on site like organizing competitions and telling everyone about our inspirational writing courses. On a free site, that is not a sustainable use of resources. Also, it is clearly apparent that a fair number (but by no means all!) of our writers seem to have become quite complacent about the standard of their submissions. Text speak, punctuation-free sentences and general writing inconsistencies have become much more commonplace, and this has resulted in a complete meltdown of our editing capability, even with Alice and Florence on board. I know that many of our members are from outside the UK and use Shortbread as a great means of learning English, but we really do not have the time or resources to edit a story that has been put through Google Language translator.

Now, this was a comment made by one of our writers in reply to a thank-you letter from Alice, and I think everyone who wants to submit to Shortbread should take note of it:

“I write the story, put it away for a while. Go back and edit, read aloud and edit some more and then submit to my local writer’s group for criticism and feedback before editing/re-writing again. It’s a long process but it must be working if you are finding these stories easy to work with. I was always told that making an editor’s job relatively straightforward was a good way to get out of the slush-pile as nothing puts people off quicker than wonky grammar, typos etc.”

I think that puts quite succinctly how a writer should feel about his or her work. I actually follow exactly the same routine, especially reading a piece out loud. It brings dialogue to life, and if it doesn’t, then there’s something wrong with the dialogue.

I realize now that we’re not doing anybody any favours by doing all this editing, because that’s not how it happens in the real world of publishing, and that, after all, is what we all aspire to be part of.  We still want to stick to Shortbread’s policy of publishing all that we receive, but everyone is going to have to work a little harder on his or her submission before it goes up on site. So don’t be surprised, or upset, or angry, if you get a return, asking for a bit more work to be done on your piece.  Just realize that it will make you a better and more experienced writer for it.

Alice has been hard at the editing for the past month, helping Fiona to diminish the number of stories held in the editing queue. I have witnessed her on occasions laughing hysterically and pulling rather forcefully at her hair. In the next couple of days, she will be posting her own blog highlighting some of the more common mistakes that have led her at times to this tottering position on the brink of self-destruction. 

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