Raring to Write: Collaborating with others to get your writing out ...

Raring to Write: Collaborating with others to get your writing out ...: I've joined forces with a young artist in an exhibition of text and image. I wrote several short stories around the theme of characters we m...

Collaborating with others to get your writing out there.

I've joined forces with a young artist in an exhibition of text and image. I wrote several short stories around the theme of characters we meet on everyday journeys. Dundee-based, Kyla Tomlinson (kylatomlinson.blogspot.com), has produced a number of humorous character-based illustrations to accompany the stories. From these images, we've also produced a range of prints. gift cards and postcards to exhibit in 'Candid Cameos', part of the Perthshire Open Studios programme (perthsireopenstudios.com). This opens on Saturday, 3rd September at Ardblair House, Burnhead Road, Blairgowrie.

No idea how this will go but going to enjoy the experience whatever the outcome! Who knows who might be reading/viewing our work . . .

Pruning the words

Are there any others out there who find editing their own writing as difficult as I do? The problem is I just love language - the shape, the sound, the size, the taste of it. And that tends to mean I overuse it. So what to do? Sometimes, it  helps to let others read the manuscript and make editing suggestions but only if they're brutally honest ones. At the end of the day, I think it's a question of maturity: like people, and with perseverance, writing progresses from the juvenile to the mature. One begins to lose some of the awkward self consciousness that characterises youth and grows into a more critical adulthood marked by a dispassionate eye and a ruthless economy of style. Well, that's the hope, anyway. In the meantime, please share your editing experiences.