Giles Coren is miffed

This blog is about me, right? So I don’t link to other stuff. In this case, though, I’ll make an exception. Well known food critic Giles Coren got seriously seriously steamed up with a sub editor or sub editors unknown at The Times. Why? Because they removed one letter from his piece.

One letter, eh? So what? But read his letter (here) and you’ll see how utterly important it was to the piece. Well, as far as he was concerned anyway. Note, the letter is more than a little sweary. Sit well back from the monitor if you don’t want to get flecks of furious spittle in your eyes.

As an amusing adjunct someone (likely not Giles himself) set up a twitter account @GilesCoren and has spent the last 3 hours (at the time of writing) being utterly, profanely furious with a rather bemused set of British journos and bloggers.

Yeah, I got a follow from @GilesCoren and I returned it. It was like opening a Pandora’s box of expletives. Ace!

Hacking The Novel about…soon

Following the long hard stare I took at The Novel I’ve decided not to start waving my metaphorical scythe about just yet. This is editing, after all, so a methodical approach is appropriate. I’ve made a kind of chapter list, a series of keyword descriptions about what happens when. A storyboard without pictures.

On this list I have flagged each item in one of four ways:

• keep it, it’s fine
• drop it, it doesn’t add anything to the story
• needs to be written
• does not need to be written

Now I’m sitting on my conclusions for a day or two to see if I’m going the right way. The stark fist of removal is no doubt required. I’m just not sure how stark it needs to be.

I shall also employ that other editoral trick of putting The Novel aside for a while and re-reading it with a clear mind sometime later. Which is fine, because I have three other writing tasks clamouring for my attention.