Just Another Week in Suburbia: Revision ~ Part 2
Following the feedback from Bernadette Foley, I read through Just Another Week in Suburbia and identified three key scenes that were issues, and which would need alternatives to help domesticate the story. There were other smaller things things throughout, obviously, and also general revisions that would round out the story. Being at this stage is different to any other feeling you have when you write. When you begin something, it’s a blank document. You fill it. When you revise, you shape what’s there, like your first draft is a big lump of clay, and every revision brings you closer to what you’re trying to create. But revising while writing in…
Just Another Week in Suburbia and The Hachette Manuscript Development Program
The Hachette Manuscript Program is a joint initiative between Hachette Australia and the Queensland Writers Centre, which involves a week of workshops on writing, editing, publishing, marketing, agents, among other things. Entrants submit fifty pages. If they’re chosen, they submit the rest of the manuscript, then go to Queensland to participate in the Program. In 2013, I submitted Just Another Week in Suburbia and “Prudence” (the book I wrote immediately after) and, as had become my wont, didn’t expect anything. However, Just Another Week in Suburbia was shortlisted. It was gratifying given it was the novel I’d designated as THE ONE (as in the one where I was determined that…