Better late than never...

Struggling for a way in to tell you about another splendid Words & Pictures week, I was tempted to embed the theme tune for Dogtanian. (Click on that link and you'll be singing one for all and all for one for the rest of the day.) Instead though, how about an adaptation of another classic text? Hampshire Youth Theatre's Tim Burtonesque production of Great Expectations was excellent. I've always found Dickens a slog - paper too thin and text too small - so to watch a concise dramatic retelling is as good as catching up with Brodie's Notes.

I've been along twice as youngest daughter played Miss Havisham - all black eye make up and rags. She's an interesting character, she does very little but she's central to the plot. Apparently Dickens wanted to write a story that would revolve around an individual who "retires to an old lonely house…resolved to shut out the world and hold no communion with it." From the Wikipedia article it appears he was pleased with the 'odd' idea but Great Expectations was another six years in the making. Three questions: Was Miss Havisham swirling around in his soup of ideas all that time? Should I root out notebooks from 2008 for the key to the work in progress? And how on earth did he manage without a laptop?

While a laptop isn't essential for great writing it certainly makes it easier (or does it? - Discuss) and  it's essential to the creation of Words & Pictures. Here's what we had for you this week...

On Monday, Everything Editorial kicked off to a fine start with some excellent proofreading tips from Catriona Tippin, Nick's back off his holidays and on Tuesday found blogs about taking a break. Check out our  SCBWI blog network for the latest updates from our SCBWI blogs. On Wednesday we had the second Agent Confidential -  Ben Illis gave us some great general tips about submitting to agents as well those specific to him. Thursday brought news from the sunny South West and Friday an open invitation to all SCBWI illustrators to submit for this year's Juried Exhibition. On Saturday we caught up with an event report from the North West's (also sunny) Speed dating for Writers  and celebrated with the lovely Helen Dineen on her signing with Agent Anne Clark.

Next week, Sara O'Connor, Editorial Director at Hot Key Books is here with another Ask a Publisher, Acting Commissioning Editor, Clare Whitston will be telling us how she finds stories for OUP. Anne-Marie will be reviewing the book 'Becoming an Illustrator' plus, we'll be having a new featured illustrator and a new banner.

I have one more paid week at work before I go voluntary with a greatly reduced workload. I have great expectations about what I'm going to achieve with all the extra time.

Hope your week's productive!

Jan Carr

---

Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is older middle grade, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta. You can contact her at editor@britishscbwi.org.