Editing in Progress

Image via WikipediaTonight's television seduced me with promises of features about books. So, two hours of goggle-box watching have shown me that best sellers are not literary novels, which came as a great surprise, of course. I've also learned that literary novels are necessarily obscure, plotless and rarely linear in structure; something else that shocked me to the core. But I'm being unfair. It was interesting to watch a presenter steeped in literary works take a voyage of discovery around the world of best selling books and realise that, actually, some of these were not only very well written but actually had something interesting and enlightening to say about the human condition. The false premise for the snobbery in the world of 'literature' exposed for all to see. And, in watching the piece on the next generation of British literary novelists, I found stimulus toward the idea of actually writing such a volume. For fun? For recognition? No, simply because I'd like to see whether it's something I can do.
However, I digress.
The edit continues. This afternoon saw me complete 2 chapters, so I'm now ready to start chapter 48, page 457.  The two chapters, in common with those preceding them, have needed little alteration. Of course, this is not the first edit; I've read and visited the MS at least four times previously. But this is supposed to be the final before I present the piece to professional eyes for their scrutiny.
Also, today, I've updated the competition page of this blog. This is a task that takes longer than the result might suggest. If you're interested in entering writing competitions, have a look at the tab above and see if there's anything there that takes your fancy. I try to keep it up to date, but it's by no means comprehensive and the sites I include on the page will take you to many more contests, if you care to do a bit of surfing there.