It is, however, *this* end. The last day in which what I’m doing could be called “first draft* rather than *revision*. Somewhere between three and four in the morning, I finally got my heroes out of the low passage out into the air and light–battered, filthy, stinking, exhausted beyond exhaustion, half their original companions dead, Read More…
Category: Revision
Checking Boxes
Scene revisions completes in past week: three. Scene revisions still to be done…???? All so far have been more complicated than just weed-whacking away excess. I read it, re-read it, re-read it again, finally realize that it’s a multiple-layer problem, and devise ways to fix it. What kinds of things are complex problems? Characters not Read More…
The Plot Thickens and the Writer Thins
Somewhere, somewhen, a philosopher or other authoritative person said that if you’ve learned something (was it something new? Anything?) you’re obliged to pass on that knowledge to someone else. The process is of course unequal and therefore stressful to the recipient of the knowledge/skill being passed on, so the good news is that reciprocal exchange Read More…
Baby Steps, Baby Steps…
So a long, multi-tiered discussion of my main characters with R-, *may* have kicked the chocks out from around the wheels and allowed things to move. It feels very…vulnerable…right now, so I’m not saying much, except that something under the surface is moving a little. I know some things Ky *isn’t* going to be doing Read More…
Revision Review
Since revision this time digs right into the foundation structure of NewBook, a post on where the revision is at the moment seems a good time to discuss the kinds of problems a book’s underpinnings or foundation–the deeper structure–can have, and strategies for fixing same. This is not a problem I have often, but it’s Read More…
Why Writers Should Read Their Own Books….
…even after publication. Before, for instance, turning in the next book (if at all possible.) At least read the old manuscript file. Because otherwise a person who thinks she knows *exactly* what the end of the previous book was like (after all, it’s the last thing she revised, and proofread, and sent off to Editor) Read More…
Rewrite in…
Earlier this week I sent back the latest rewrite…and boy, should you be celebrating the fact that Editor held my feet to the fire and made me work the monster over again. It’s MUCH better now. (Editor may not think it’s enough better, as is Editor’s prerogative, but it’s definitely better.) Among other things, while Read More…
Done Again, Dunnigan
This afternoon I mailed the manuscript back to Editor. It’s done. It’s done again for the umpteenth time. I thought it was done last week, but Editor was busy with something else and said “I’ll be ready for it in a week and a half. ” So I spent a week combing its mane and Read More…
Fossils
In the previous post I blithely announced that I was finished, done, absolutely and finally done with the structural revisions. This morning, working on temporal nits (the book has day-by-day notation in some places, and Editor had found some of them to be either confusing or obviously wrong–fossils of earlier drafts), I found a great Read More…
Step One + Snippet
Saturday, April 2, I finished the structural parts of the revisions. Now I’m going over the other comments. Stuff has been taken out. Stuff taken out was partly at the request of Editor and partly my initiative, as the changes in structure up to that point made the stuff taken out less organic to the Read More…