Guest post: author Eliza B Hill

I've been chatting with local (to me) author Eliza B Hill who has just published her children's novel The Little Garden Gate - and as if writing the story wasn't enough, she has also illustrated it. Isn't the cover lovely? She shares her thoughts here:

'For six years I was fortunate and privileged to spend a lot of time with my two granddaughters and to be a part of their world of make-believe and imagination.

'Do you have fairies in your garden? Do they sit on your windowsill in the evening and listen to your problems? Ours did, or so I was told. I needed to remain proactive and ready for the girls' visits. What better way than to write a book about our imaginary friends, illustrate it and then publish it myself?

'In less than three months, the stories tumbled from my head and I stopped at around 20,000 words. What a jumble! I walked away for a few weeks then re-read the manuscript with a clearer mind. It wasn't good. In order to give the book structure yet retain a theme throughout, I returned to my finance days: accountancy errors are never found starting at the top of the balance sheet, but if you begin at the bottom and work back the error will appear.

'So, I completed the final story first. Now all I had to do was arrive there, so I created a spreadsheet listing the characters and where they could appear in the book. From here on, I was able to understand how many drawings would be required and on what pages the stories would begin and end. Simple infrastructure to connect the characters was the key. The strongest protagonists emerged and more changes were made to weed out the weakest characters. Their stories could be used another time.

'It worked for me (apart from some crazy grammatical mistakes that were ironed out by a competent, professional and trustworthy lady without whom this would not have been possible).

'My project has been a learning curve and next time it will be much better. Someone lit a fire in my belly and unwittingly gave me a second chance. All because, at the lowest point in my life, I picked up paper, paints and crayons and believed in two little girls.'

Two things struck me: Eliza's willingness to cut out superfluous characters; and her methodical approach to story structure and layout. Anyone else work like this?

Editorial decisions

One of the joys of being a jobbing wordsmith is that I never know what is going to turn up next. At the moment, I'm working on two children's fiction books, which is a bit of a departure for me. I have, though, made it clear to both authors that I shall be reading with a sub's eye, and am not equipped to input anything regarding structure and so on that a 'proper' fiction editor might, beyond elements that any mother or reader would notice.

This is an important distinction. When clients come to me with a project and they ask me to proofread it, I always ask them to clarify what they think that means. Do they want me to mark only spelling mistakes and punctuation slips, or would they like me to look for consistency, syntax howlers and plain old mistakes? My hourly rate is the same, whatever they want. I'm using the same brain, after all. The brief needs to be clear, though, or I could waste my time or overstep the mark - and the bill could be much higher than expected.

Likewise, if I'm asked to edit something. Does this mean spelling, grammar, consistency, formatting to style, fact-checking: how far am I to go? The best customers are those who give me free rein to fix anything I notice: the worst are those who assure me the text is 'pretty much OK', only for me to discover it's actually a bit of a nightmare.

Back to the children's books. The one I'm working on today has been read by many of the author's supportive friends and relatives who have all made (mostly encouraging) suggestions. It has also been shown to a librarian and I have seen the comments she has made, which are very incisive, as might be expected. What interests me is that she has only remarked on the story and not the writing, which is where I come in, I suppose.