Writer - Rewrite! Ruth Symes / Megan Rix

                                   Writer - Rewrite!
                              Ruth Symes / Megan Rix

When I started my writing career I hated re-writing. I wrote so fast it seemed to me that it was a whole lot easier to just write a new book than re-write the one I’d just written – which I was usually more than a teensy bit tired of anyway.

 But then a book or two down the line I started to think rewriting might not be so bad after all. Not just tweaking mind – a proper rewrite.  My opinion of rewriting changed  - due to a few rewriting success stories.

The first thing that happened was that after two books being taken and me thinking I’d cracked it the next 3 or 4 couldn’t find a publishing home. Audrey Adams was an editor at Andersen at the time and she kindly made a few editorial suggestions and the next thing I knew the horror story I’d written about the dangers of blind-dating (this was in 2000 – yikes – so long ago!) had turned into a comedy and Andersen published it as The Mum Trap – still in print 10 years on.

The next re-writing success story is even better:

I’ve always written for both print and broadcast and I wrote a script called ‘Merry Meet’ while on the MA in TV Scriptwriting course at Leicester DeMontfort University. Merry Meet was the pilot for a one hour TV show about an ex-witch trying to lead a normal life without magic. The script was selected by the Screenwriters Festival as one of the scripts they wanted to promote that year. They arranged for it to have a professional script reading and I was presented with a script report on my work.

Editors at publishing houses I realised, as I read the report, even the ones who seem fierce, are really sweet kittens compared to the killer dog savagery of a script report writer. No holds barred – that report went for the jugular and tore my script to shreds.

Afterwards I was told by a surprised producer that it was one of the kinder reports and I shouldn’t be so sensitive about my work – who knew???

Anyway, I started to rewrite Merry Meet and as I did so I began to think about what my lead character might have been like before she gave up magic. Was she born a witch or did she become one? And as I was thinking this I suddenly knew just what she was like as a girl and even what she sounded like.

I finished re-writing my one hour script but at the same time I started writing the first chapter and synopsis of a children’s novel about a young witch.

Piccadilly had just published one of my picture books - about a dinosaur called Little Rex - and so I mentioned this idea I had for a series of books about a witchling called Bella Donna to them, and Ruth Williams, the editor there, thought they might be very interested – but would like it written for a slightly younger market than I’d been thinking of.

More re-writes later ‘Bella Donna’ Book 1 in the Coven Road series was published in October 2010, ‘Too Many Spells’ was published in April 2011 and ‘Witchling’ came out at the beginning of October – a fourth’s just been commissioned.


As for the script – that isn’t doing much - although I might just need to take another look at it. And that blind dating horror idea could be good – maybe it’s time for some more rewriting!

Ruth's website is at www.ruthsymes.com
Megan's website is at www.meganrix.com