Embracing the Fiction Author Journey

65. Scenes, Characters, Series, Oh My! Taming the Chaos of Multi-Project Writing w/ Edward Green

• Erin P.T. Canning

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 28:21

What happens when have twenty million ideas all jumbled up in your head, and you struggle with multiple projects—or worse, multiple, multivolume series?

Joining us today is Edward Green, who is a prolific writer.

During this episode, Edward shares not only his writing journey but also the answers to questions that used to plague him too. Like, when you have so many ideas screaming for attention all at once, how do you keep track of all those random scenes that pop into your head?

You’ll also learn how to keep track of hundreds of characters and know if you’re on the right track with your story when it could go in so many directions?

Oh, and by the way, if you were ever curious to know why authors enjoy writing erotica or erotic romance, then you’re in for a bonus treat. Edward’s answer might just surprise you.

Topics discussed in this episode:
•Edward’s writing journey
•Biggest difference in his writing career
•Character richness
•Balancing feedback
•Craft game changers
•How to head hop effectively
•The inspiration and joys of writing erotica
•Roadblocks overcome
•Keeping track of tons of characters
•Pros and cons of scheduling your pre-orders
•BONUS: Top tip & learning the craft

About Edward:

Edward Green writes erotica, fantasy, and science fiction with an understanding of the chaos that life, insecurity, and personal goals impose on characters and the sweetness, humor, and tragedy that can result. He writes due to the accident of having begun and then found it is a part of his identity. His imagination creates characters, and he takes tremendous joy in bringing their stories to life and sharing them. As well as writing, Edward is the designer for the Him and Her Erotic Steel range of adult toys.

Get his books:
•Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Edward-Green/author/B001KCK1J2
•Meeting Him: https://a.co/d/0DCaGz3
•Meredith’s Journey Begins: https://a.co/d/9mKji7M

Connect with Edward:
•FB page: https://www.facebook.com/EdwardGreenEroticAuthor
•Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erotic_author
•Website: https://www.edwardgreenauthor.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

READY TO TAKE YOUR WRITING FURTHER? 

Join our Patreon community and access our vibrant Discord writing group to get writing prompts, participate in sprints, download free resources, and more: 
https://www.patreon.com/erinptcanningeditor

Erin P.T. Canning:

We've all seen the memes of writers staring at a blank document and yanking their hair out. But what about the writers who have 20 million ideas all jumbled up in their head, and they struggle with multiple projects? Or worse, multiple multi volume series? Whew. As authors, we need to stay organized so overwhelm doesn't get the best of us and derail our author career. But how does one go about doing that? Joining us today is Edward Green, who is a prolific writer. He has more than 800, 000 words for his multi volume erotic romance series, The Ella Jane Stories, while also keeping a colossal number of notes and stashing away scenes for not one, but two fantasy series. During this episode, Edward shares not only his writing journey, but also the answers to questions that used to plague him, too. Like, when you have so many ideas screaming for attention all at once, how do you keep track of all those random scenes that pop into your head? How do you keep track of hundreds of characters? How do you know if you're on the right track with your story when it could go in so many directions? And when you have many books planned, what about scheduling their release dates? Is it wise to do that in advance? These are just some of the answers that Edward shares with you today. By the way, if you were ever curious to know why authors enjoy writing erotica or erotic romance, then you're in for a bonus treat. Edward's answer might just surprise you. Oh, if you're looking for a professional inline editor to help you make your prose as clear and strong as possible, stick around after the episode to find out how I can help. Now, let's get to the show. You're listening to Parents Who Write, the podcast that helps you pursue your writing dreams. I'm your host, Erin P. T. Canning. I'm an author, editor, writing coach, and mom of two young boys. And my mission is to help you prioritize your writing, strengthen your voice, and gain confidence and direction so that you can own your identity as a writer and thrive as an author. Hey friend, thank you for joining me for another episode of Parents Who Write. Today I am joined by Edward Green. Ed, can you tell us a bit about your writing journey thus far?

Edward Green:

Well, my writing journey started off by being told at school that my handwriting was so untidy that I shouldn't. Um, then at secondary school I had two fabulous literature teachers who didn't manage to teach me how to pass any literature exams, but helped me, uh, develop my love of writing and language.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Hmm.

Edward Green:

And then wrote a bit of poetry, bad teenage poetry, of course, uh, before setting up and professionally doing some journalism, writing about cricket and technical reports. A number of years ago, I started sketching out the outlines of some, some novels, fantasy, erotica, and a couple, and some science fiction. And then a few years ago, I decided on a career change and stopped working in IT and started doing other things and being able to devote quite a lot of time to, to writing. And I now have four novels out. Those four are all erotic romance. I do have a couple of fantasy series which are hoping to get the first book of one of them out this year.

Erin P.T. Canning:

So the series that you have out now is give us a little bit about that.

Edward Green:

Uh, well the series I've got now is, um, Ella Jane, the him and her story, which is um, sounds kind of arrogant. It's written as kind of like my answer to, to what, what Fifty Shades I think should have been, perhaps. Um, it's written from the point of view of someone who's, A, it's not a total innocent as the, the female character. Uh, she knows exactly what she's doing, exactly what she's getting into, and is very much an active part of the process of them getting together. And, B, it's all done in such a way as to help the reader appreciate the concept of consent. So it's, it's very much focused on, on consent, on the relationship, on the how and why, but while also retaining a plot and light hearted humor.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Yeah, yeah, definitely lighthearted humor. You are a master of banter, that is for certain. Um, Mm

Edward Green:

romance or erotica, if you think the number of funny things that go wrong, but you rarely see them reflected in the story, so I, I try and do that.

Erin P.T. Canning:

I love that. Your books definitely have humor to them. I also really appreciate the fact that you're talking about that she is consensual in the relationship, and that makes her and him, uh, equals, I would say, in in terms of their investment in the relationship that they're building.

Edward Green:

Yeah, I, it's, there's a strange thing. The naive perspective is that the dominance in charge of everything

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm hmm.

Edward Green:

and then there's a slightly more aware thing that the claim that the submissives in charge. We're in actual fact, they both have a right to say no. They both have a right to stop. They both have a right to continue the relationship or not. As with any positive relationship, it's very much a mutual thing.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Yeah.

Edward Green:

And I think that's something that I hope I get over and that I've been told by people who've been in the lifestyle longer than I have that that I, I capture it, so.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Hmm. That's very cool. So you have a lot of books in the works right now. How are you juggling all of these story ideas and series? What does your writing process look like?

Edward Green:

Um, my writing process at the moment is piling everything I can into Ella Jane. And when I, an idea for something else crops up, making brief notes and saving them in the appropriate folder. I have this huge complicated folder tree, which starts off with books, and under that it's got each of the series on its own, and then some of the series have got sub series under them. Um, and then things go into the folder.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Oh, cool. Cool. So what do you think has made the biggest difference in your writing career right now?

Edward Green:

I think the feedback I've had. I think I've had a, a great deal of help from, uh, editors, uh, notably from yourself

Erin P.T. Canning:

oh, thank.

Edward Green:

And then the feedback we get on what we write from other writers, from alpha and beta readers, uh, from people who you just get talking to about your stories. For most writers, I think the biggest influence is what we read. We probably say what we watch as well.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Yes, you got me to finally watch The Tenth Kingdom.

Edward Green:

Oh my God, that is so, and again, that, that fits very much with the, the character rich way that we both like to write.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Yes, the character richness. I do love that. Why don't we talk about that a little bit? How do you define that?

Edward Green:

I define it as, there are books you can read, there are stories you can watch, uh, or listen to, uh, films, series where you can imagine meeting the character as a person. I would say that's what character richness is. And from a writer's point of view, it's, you know you've cracked it when you can close your eyes and imagine the conversations between the characters. And I know you've had this as well, is when you start off writing a scene and then you stop halfway through and go, but you wouldn't say that, or she wouldn't say that. No, she'd do something else instead. It's when those characters actually develop an independent identity. I mean, she's submissive to him and submissive within the sexual side of their relationship, but she's no wilting wallflower. So there are a couple of things where she'll either stand up to him or, if it matters to her, she will take charge. And you've got to go, okay, well, this has gone a bit left field.

Erin P.T. Canning:

wonder how

Edward Green:

you write it out, and things seem to work out. You may not wind up where you wanted to be, but you wind up where the story wanted to be.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Yes,

Edward Green:

I think that's, that's what counts.

Erin P.T. Canning:

So there was another thing that you said I found really interesting. It was, um, about how working with other writers has made the biggest impact on your author career thus far. So I'm curious, where is it that you were going to interact with these other writers who are giving you this quality feedback?

Edward Green:

Uh, well I, I talk to, um, yourself, uh, as, as friends. Uh, I've been involved with Maria Secoy's Author to Writer program, which I found very useful. And I, I talk to people online in, in writer groups. There's a couple of, uh, people who from one of the Erotica sites, from Literotica, who I correspond with and we share story segments and

Erin P.T. Canning:

Hmm, good. So, in terms of the feedback, how do you balance the feedback that you're getting to make sure that it is going to help you achieve your goals with your story, rather than, uh, opinionated feedback, which is something that I'm always warning people about, is to be careful of the opinionated feedback. You know, the, I would have done it this way, or I'd rather see this, or I think the character should do that, I don't know, something along those lines.

Edward Green:

With the main fantasy series, The Kingdom Chronicles and the Empire Chronicles, I didn't talk to anyone about until it, until the characters were quite well formed. So that gives me a protection against that.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm.

Edward Green:

And with Ella Jane, I partly developed the idea of the Ella Jane story talking to one of the people I met on Literotica. Um, we were actually quite saying, so much romance and so much erotica has, uh, a massive imbalance in awareness between the characters.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Oh. Mm

Edward Green:

If it's a romance, it's a very naive young either man or woman with a older, more experienced man or woman. There's an age gap in Ella Jane, but Ella Jane is very highly educated. She's very aware of her sexuality. She's, uh, has strong opinions on herself, and on others, and on people, and on politics, which develop during the course of the series, in which she develops her understanding of that. And she, she starts to move in his more powerful circles, and starts to grow into a place within those circles. That's very much where as the usual thing is, oh, I will, I cower before my wonderful boyfriend, or My billionaire, my mafia lord, whereas Ella Jane doesn't, in the way that it's conventionally portrayed. She's, uh, so she's nobody's fool and uh, nobody's victim. I'm very, very cautious of any feedback which suggests changing anything to a character, about a character. If someone comes back and says, but I don't think she'd have done that because, then I'll take that far more seriously rather than someone saying, well, I want this different story. Now, sometimes when someone says, I want this different story, I will then sit down and write 3000 words about the outline of this other story for the character that they really wanted me to write. But I, I mostly write in third person. So if someone's feedback is, I want it written in first or second person, then it's going to be, well, that's okay. That's a different story, and I'm not sure I'm the one to write it.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm.

Edward Green:

If it's a problem with, I, I, you know, I have a tendency to write sentences which are slightly longer than the average um master's thesis. So I, I have got a lot better with that, and I, I'm slowly learning to trim down, But some of what I wrote when I was writing technical papers, I would deliberately write in a manner which would intimidate uh, university professors, because I wanted to put them in the framework of feeling intimidated, but that's not the style you want to write when essentially, you're writing something for someone to curl up with a hot cocoa and uh perhaps a favorite battery powered device and

Erin P.T. Canning:

This episode will be rated not for children.

Edward Green:

Hey, it could be a robot

Erin P.T. Canning:

Could be a robot. Exactly. So in terms of your writing, can you share something you learned about the writing process or the craft that was a game changer?

Edward Green:

Couple of things one there's, if I'm feeling uncomfortable with a passage, to sit down and record it, so read it out loud to myself And I find that's really beneficial and also, uh, ways of reading through that, that I work through with yourself to eliminate weak language. So that really has, has helped a lot to, to, to, to add a tightness into pace, to the scenes and to, to control pace

Erin P.T. Canning:

Can you, um, elaborate on that second part more? You said about working through weak language,

Edward Green:

of, one of the aspects would be with. I tend to be quite elliptical sometimes,

Erin P.T. Canning:

hmm.

Edward Green:

and then not always appropriately. So if I, when I read something through, I focus quite heavily on how direct do I need this to be?

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm hmm.

Edward Green:

and two other ones would be picking the technique of picking a central perspective in each scene. Because writing in third person, unless you're writing a documentary, you still have to write in a way which the reader can imagine themself into and that works best from, from mostly focusing on one person's perspective, uh, particularly. So fight scenes has been, been one area where I think we've worked on together a couple of times.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Yeah, so that is interesting because a lot of times people think that now they have to write from only one perspective, that you're not supposed to head hop. And yet your book manages that really well where you do head hop in your story in third person perspective. But like you said, the majority of the book is told from Ella Jane's perspective. So when do you decide that you need to jump into somebody else's head and how do you help make that a smooth transition?

Edward Green:

It helps to, A, you make it clear as far as you can writing wise. It helps to stop and think about who the central character of each scene is, or of each sub scene is. Um, I did, when I started writing Meredith, I found that I wrote nearly all of it from Meredith's perspective, but I got a lot of feedback saying, I really want to know how he feels, how William feels, how the lover feels. And so I started dripping in more of other people's emotions and perspectives. And then with the Ella Jane series, because it's quite, it's a world with a lot of characters in, there are scenes which only one of them's in, that makes it easy that I will generally focus on their perspective, on the perspective of whichever the lover's in. Um, although there are other, it's a, it's a sufficiently rich world that sometimes neither of them are in a scene and then it's who is owning the conversation, who's, who's driving the agenda, even if only for a couple of paragraphs, but if one person is driving the conversation, then their thoughts, their emotions become more the center of attention for me.

Erin P.T. Canning:

I appreciate that, because like you said, fight scenes can get very overwhelming, and regardless of whether you're writing erotica or romance, where you have a brawl in a pub between two macho guys, or maybe it's a chick fight, whatever the case may be, or if you're in a fantasy novel where you've got swords out and horses and the cavalry is coming, etc, um, writing those scenes can be very intimidating for writers. And yet, like you said, at least Um, the advice that I always give to my clients if they're writing only one POV is to make sure that when they're writing those fight scenes, we are still following only one POV. So if it's Adeline who's in the middle of a sword fight that's going on, it's what she's saying and she's taking in and her emotional reaction to everything and her trying to process everything and figuring out how to get out of there, rather than trying to follow every single person, even though I've got all these other secondary characters who I adore. Um. She's only taking in as much as she can, and so we're following her point of view. Because otherwise, it's too much to take in. So, I remember you doing the exact same thing in a scene where there's a fight in Ella Jane. And I remember working on that scene with you, where in that moment of the fight, we made sure everything that was going on was his perspective. And that changed things, because he knows the moves that he's doing. He knows, he knows if he's breaking somebody's wrist or if he's not, but if we were following Ella Jane's perspective, he might try to shield her from that so she wouldn't see it. So, um, you just do that really well, that if that sub scene is then going to be from his perspective, you make sure that we have that language for him and that we are seeing what he is seeing and interpreting it the way he is, as opposed to her standing off to the side and all of a sudden, like, what the heck is happening? You know, and like, it's a blur. Um, so well done. I wanted to

Edward Green:

Yeah, I remember we had the exact conversation of, that she would, she would perceive it as a blur, and we discussed it and we, and that the scene needed that clarity and where he'd have, he's not as detached as some of the other people in the scene, which I'll save it for anyone who wishes to, to read the, the, um, Traveling with Him, that's in the third Ella Jane book. There's more danger scenes coming up in later on it's a couple of fun. That's coming up.

Erin P.T. Canning:

So, can I ask, uh, what was the inspiration for her and him, aside from, well, her and him, Ella Jane and Him, I mean, aside from the fact of, uh, wanting to rewrite the book in terms of what Fifty Grades should have been, um, but like, what was the inspiration for those two characters and their storyline?

Edward Green:

I think the they've to some extent been pirated from a blends of people I've known and with with an injection of fantasy there's certainly a few people who will smile on reading the occasional scene and think oh

Erin P.T. Canning:

Something that happened! Okay!

Edward Green:

Yes. Um, yeah, there's a few of those. It's quite oddly that in some of my stories, some of the weirdest stuff has been lifted straight out of real life.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Wow. That's entertaining. That is very entertaining. Um, what is it that you particularly enjoy about writing erotica? Aside from, again, correcting Fifty Shades of Grey. I know how you feel about that book. No offense to the author of Fifty Shades of Grey. But like, what is it that you

Edward Green:

think it's, it's very, it's to be fair. To be fair to Rahel James, A, she didn't come from that background or the lifestyle, and B, it's a tremendously difficult thing to write. I think I have a particular passion for it. I, uh, I designed a set of a range of, um, toys and restraints. Um, I've educated within the lifestyle and I've, I've dabbled extensively for, for a number of years. So,

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm.

Edward Green:

gives me a background and it, writing about something that you're passionate about. We both write fantasy. We share so much with, with all other fantasy readers, the, the, the, the love of, uh, adventure of the novel of, and with erotica, it's, I, I have a, a passion for both the, the, the practice and, and theory, but also for the, the, the wonderful richness of the, the people you meet in that lifestyle, and they're a very special kind of people and in the same way as with, with our, our fantasy community. So if you talk to, uh, both re enactors, readers, writers in the fantasy genre, they're a particularly special kind of people. And it, it, to, to write something for markets such as that is, uh, it, it's great when you get feedback from someone who, who loves that kind of thing saying, Yeah, that's how I feel. Or that's how, or that reminded me of, or I learned that from that. Or, Oh, I laughed so much because I had this friend who,

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm hmm.

Edward Green:

That, that gives you a particular, a sense that you've, you've captured reality. And that's

Erin P.T. Canning:

I appreciate that with your work too. Because I didn't know much about that genre until I started working with All Right Well, and I started working with you. Um, and it was very interesting to see the authenticity of the relations between these people. And so you just, you do a beautiful job of capturing that.

Edward Green:

great. Thank you so much.

Erin P.T. Canning:

You're welcome. You've been amazing to work with. You're entertaining for sure. What are some of the hardest roadblocks that you've had to overcome with your writing?

Edward Green:

I have this horrible, horrible habit of I think in terms of scenes episodically, but the scenes aren't necessarily in order. With the six to 10 volume fantasy story and without a Jane, which is kind of the story of him and Ella Jane will stretch to at least a dozen books. Knowing some of what's going to happen in two thousand pages time

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm hmm.

Edward Green:

makes it really difficult to, you have to write the story for where it's going. And sometimes the characters then decide that they're going to shift you from one lane to another. So that's difficult and it's, there are times also when it's a, the task of writing a complex story at times feels overwhelming. And I think slowly learning to to get better at stopping, taking a deep breath, stepping away, stepping back and getting back into creative mode is something that we're both fairly early in our novel writing careers. And I think that's something which we both hope we're getting better at.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Yeah, because the Ella Jane series has a lot of subplots to it, right? There's, uh, political implications. There's the whole thing that you're building with his work and like people who are greedy versus not greedy, et cetera, his estate issues, like, so you have a lot that you are planning into that. So you're saying like, if you know that you want John, random name, if you want John to be a bad guy in book, 80. Um, right? Um, you know, and then John all of a sudden is not acting the way that you need him to, to set him up for book 80. Is that where you're talking about where it's struggling? It's like, no, but I need you to do this.

Edward Green:

Yeah, the characters need to be where, where they are for the key, key plot moments, and they need to be introduced in the right way, because you, I, I found with, with book three and four, there's a lot of new characters come into the story, and in book four particularly, there's a lot of characters who then become subplot characters, so that, that's been really hard work, and that, that's something that, yeah, the, the first pressing of it's out, but I'm not happy enough with it, that I'm, I, it's out as an e book, but not as a paperback yet. There will be some work done on that before I release a paperback, and that will obviously go back into the e book.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Is that number three or number four?

Edward Green:

That's number four. The first, the first three I'm happy with, but number four, which is, um, Her Hometown, where you meet her friends, you meet some of his, you meet some more of his, um, more exotic business acquaintances.

Erin P.T. Canning:

hmm.

Edward Green:

And you start finding out a bit about. What their ambitions are.

Erin P.T. Canning:

So I have a question then. You have a full cast of characters, considering the number of volumes that Ella Jane is going to be. I mean, we're talking dozens upon dozens of characters. How do you keep track of them all?

Edward Green:

I have a, an overriding cast of characters, uh, document, and I also have little single piece documents for, for the main characters.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Okay, good.

Edward Green:

I also have several hundred pages worth of things that happened before the story starts.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Oh my gosh, Okay! You have so much written! Oh, you will amaze me how much you put together for this book. When

Edward Green:

Yeah,

Erin P.T. Canning:

So you're going to re release number four soon, update the e

Edward Green:

I'm going to re release number 4 soon. I'm checking number 5 in today, but that's probably going to have a re write as well. So that will be, by Easter, there will be 5 completed Ella Jane books that I'm entirely happy with. And they will be set up for a series of unbelievably naughty novellas.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Nice. So you released book four, but you're not happy with it, so you're going to update the files. What, what exactly happened? Like, why did you release it if you weren't happy about it?

Edward Green:

Well it's, there's an Amazon thing that you, you can only delay things once by up to four weeks. And I went through a huge writing blip. And my, my original schedule had expected book five to be book four, but, um, there was no way that I was going to join up the plot. So books four and five have had a much more difficult birth

Erin P.T. Canning:

So you had scheduled your pre release, and then you were like, this story got to be way too

Edward Green:

Yeah. My, yeah, my, my advice to, to, to other writers would be do not schedule your first dozen or so pre releases until you actually know when they're going to, until they're far, very close to complete.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Hmm.

Edward Green:

It's, I was overly ambitious in setting pre-release dates.

Erin P.T. Canning:

That is a difficult thing, right? Because, on one hand, scheduling that pre release forces us to be like, Okay, I'm going to meet this deadline, and I'm going to work my butt off, and I'm going to make sure that, like, I release this book, and so this way I can't, like, for me, I backed myself into a corner with book two, um, because I got sick in the month of September, and then October, I was like, I'm tired, and it's fine, it's fine, my book's not coming out until February, and then November hit, and I was like, Oh, no, no, no, no, the book is Due to my editor at the beginning of January. So really, I only have two months now to revise 120, 000 words. Oh my god. But I can see the benefit also where I'm attempting, I haven't made the decision yet. when this episode airs, we will know what decision I went with. But I'm debating scheduling my pre release for book three to force myself to not take two months off and back myself into a corner again. I don't know.

Edward Green:

Yeah, but for, for me, I need to get, uh, further down the line. Probably, after what, five, after this estate, I'm probably also gonna put out another couple of novels from other series and really give myself time to, to bed down some of the plot intricacies of Ella Jane, but in the book, the first five books will give you a four hundred thousand words of tremendous naughtiness and a very satisfying story up until that point, but then there is much more to come after that.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Right. What is your final, top piece of advice that you wish you had known when you started writing?

Edward Green:

Learn more about the craft

Erin P.T. Canning:

Hmm. Hmm.

Edward Green:

the, I think it. Um, but on the other hand, I suspect that every writer starts off knowing it all and then to some extent learns how much they don't. Um, I, I'm glad that I started writing once I'd got some good stories, what I think are good story ideas and what other people who've read my stuff think are good story ideas.

Erin P.T. Canning:

hmm.

Edward Green:

Um, I think you see some writers who, They have a couple of ideas and they write a couple of very creative books. And then there's a sort of a curve as you, you, you learn, you, you learn the craft, but you haven't got the novelties of the creative novelty. And then they go back up again to a new height.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm

Edward Green:

Um, right. Things that I, I, I started, I did try a couple of things, which weren't stories that I'm passionate about. Really don't do that. Uh, right, right. The themes you love. Definitely would be the thing, um,

Erin P.T. Canning:

creates that intrinsic motivation.

Edward Green:

it's, uh, writing a book is a monumental task, and it's something that's for the generations and for yourself. Big pardon.

Erin P.T. Canning:

When you say learning the craft, what is it that you learned or or how can people go about learning the craft? Or what do you think has made the biggest difference for you in terms of learning the craft?

Edward Green:

um, I think going back and focusing on how fiction's written, um, reading other people's books, having decided that I wanted to, to write my own, and so working with, working with a good editor. Just to, the understanding, the feedback of this is why this bit works, this is why this bit doesn't. And then that lets you learn into your experience.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Mm.

Edward Green:

I, I'm much more comfortable writing in a more conversational style than I used to be.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Okay, nice. Um, so not to toot the horn of editors, but I am one and I do believe in the work that we do. But, um, would you say that you, Learned more than working with editors versus like taking writing workshops and, um, learning the craft

Edward Green:

Yeah. Yeah. I'd say so. Yes. I think it's having the opportunity to work with an editor who you and be able to talk to the editor has been probably the most, the most powerful thing.

Erin P.T. Canning:

That's really cool. That's really cool. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks to Edward, you now know how you too can keep track of your growing collection of notes and character bios and the benefits of prioritizing one series to begin with. You can find Edward's novels on Amazon, including the first four books of the Ella Jane stories, beginning with Meeting Him. Just take a look at the show notes for the link. And if you're looking for an inline editor to polish your prose, strengthen your voice, and help you fill in those missing pieces of your story that you can feel but not quite find, then take a look at my editing services so that you can publish your book with complete confidence. Just visit parentswhowwrite. com slash editing or click on the link in the show notes. As always, keep writing.

Head Shot

Erin P.T. Canning

Host