Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing

With regard to reading for Angry Robot Books, I am half way through the second last MS and will probably start the last one tomorrow and finish it sometime over the weekend. Today I sent out a few rejections and a couple of good news emails on further recommendations to Angry Robot Books. These two shift the gender balance further as both are male. That is 14 recommended manuscripts for the editors. I’m not sure whether they hate me or love me for sending so many. I’ll be asking for feedback from them eventually.

After reading the last of the MSs, I have to trawl through my submissions table (running at about 10,000 words) to find the names of those I said I’d recommend to the editors. I’m not sure how many of these there were-probably a handful. By being recommended they will be able to submit to Angry Robot in future, either with a new project or an improved one.

Yesterday, Angry Robot Books’ author, Colin Harvey died from a massive stroke. I was very upset about this and I really liked him. He was a great bloke. I’m will do a tribute post to him when I’m not so teary. I’m also going to have a drink with Kaaron Warren to say goodbye to Colin, later in the week. I can’t imagine what a horrible shock it must be for his wife, Kate, nor how she is coping.

I started my advanced editing course today and spoke to our lecturer. It seems I can use some of the content on this website as part of my editing journal. I am very pleased about that considering I have dedicated nearly six months of my life to reading submissions and then writing about the experience. Next week, my house may even get cleaned, but there are no guarantees! Reading submissions for almost all my spare time is kind of like an internship, I think. However, not completely as there were many editing related tasks I didn’t do, like write blurbs, design assignments, commissioning covers, marketing etc. So I don’t have too many tickets on myself.

I also think the insights gained, including the substance of the posts about the issues in manuscripts, will help me when I edit Claire McKenna’s novella for my major assignment.

For the record, I work in my day job for 30 hours per week, that is four days full time. I spend a lot of time stressing about my job in my spare time. Sometimes, I also stressed about Mss (including dreaming that I’m still reading them when I’m asleep) at the same time, which makes me a bit stressy and wakeful. Right now I’m feeling relaxed.

So next week, when everything is wrapped up, I think I will post some thoughts on reading submissions and maybe do an overview of the qualities of the MSs I did recommend, in a general kind of way, it being private and between the authors and Angry Robot.

I also want to thank Angry Robot for allowing me the opportunity to partake of this development opportunity. I know I whinged and moaned about it and it was so very hard at times to keep going, but I think all growth opportunities are painful in some way. I definitely learned so much and I’m quite excited about finishing off the editing component of my post graduate certificate in profession writing and using the insights I have gained in honing my editing eye.