Diamond Principle

Last night I had feedback on my Through Mortal Eyes manuscript , from Jo Wyton (Notes from the Slushpile) and Nicki Thornton (Mostly Books), who are both members of SCBWI Oxford and Abingdon Writers.  These lovely ladies read my complete manuscript, wading through the spelling and grammatical errors in the 86000 word document.

So yesterday was d-day - when they made the expedition to my house and gave me their feedback. I was so nervous that I busied myself all day with cleaning, and ironing (these I usually avoid at all costs). Fortunately my worrying was unfounded as their critiques were both constructive and positive, so much so that feeling inspired and reinvigorated, I started re-working on the manuscript as soon as they left at 10pm (albeit with wine in hand!)

Apart from all of the positive feedback, which I’m now working into my next draft of TME, the evening also gave me a new way of approaching writing. This approach I’m affectionately naming the ‘Diamond Principle’. 

The Diamond Principle is simple. It’s just like Prince Albert and the Koh-i-Noor , the biggest known diamond in the world in the Victorian age. In the pursuit of perfection, Albert had the diamond cut down from 186 1/16 carats (37.21 g) to 105.602 carats (21.61 g).

So the diamond principle is, this

Of course, Albert didn’t undertake this endeavour blindly, he consulted advise from many experts and the cutting was done by expert mineralogist James Tennant . Like Albert, the ‘Diamond Principle’ of writing would advise you to take advise from editors, and critique groups (like SCBWI), and keep cutting the word count, and polishing the manuscript until it as perfect and as shinny as the Koh-i-Noor.

So, today I’ve continued re-writing, but not before I spent time searching for and printing out a picture of the The Koh-i-Noor to stick on my notice board to remind me to keep cutting and polishing TME until it is as perfect and shiny as possible!