Of This and Other Worlds

Thanks to jmprince for pointing me to Editorial Anonymous: A Blog of a Children's Book Editor. I've created a LiveJournal feed for those who'd like to have the posts show up on their friendslist:

editorial_anon

*wanders off, still snickering about the 6,000-word picture book*

My Inner Editor and I have come to a truce. Fixing Chapter Four turned out to be positively simple after a good night's sleep ("Weeping endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning," and all that). Then when I re-read Chapter Eight, which two months ago was the Worst Chapter Ever, and discovered that it was actually rather good in parts, I felt much better overall. I still have a few technical glitches to fix, and I'm still dealing ruthlessly with redundant and overused phrases wherever I find them, but I no longer feel as though I am up to my armpits in a cistern of my own authorial suckitude.

I went to the doctor this week about a strange visual/neurological symptom I've been experiencing every six weeks or so, with a blurred halo around my vision and wavy/jagged lines on the right side. Turns out that I am having migraine auras without the headache part. Funky! Now I can stop worrying and enjoy the ride, since it's probably the closest I'll ever get to synaesthesia.

I have a lovely fat slab of saffron cake, fresh from my mother's oven, and a steaming cup of Earl Grey. All's right with the world.

YES. YES I HAVE IT. YES!!!

*is so happy*

Willow's new name is Linden, and it suits her perfectly.

*goes to edit it into the final draft*

...and after all that, she-who-was-Willow seems to think her name may be Vervain. Which wasn't even on the poll.

Oh, and Amaryllis has just seen fit to inform me that she changed her name on taking the throne, and that it used to be Alder. Which makes a great deal of sense, and even explains a couple of things about her, but still, did it have to take her THIRTEEN YEARS to get around to this?

*grumbles and adds to the list of Things I Must Change In The Final Edit*

Rowan Atkinson shows Hugh Laurie's Shakespeare how it's done:



Sheer genius.

Except my aim isn't nearly as good as Mary Russell's, so you may want to duck...

Anyway, further to my last entry, I've been trying to follow alg's suggested format in writing up a pitch for my manuscript. Here's what I've got:

( Title, status, subgenre, word count, style, brief description of the plot including character motivation )

( Why I wrote this book, what else I've written, and what I expect from my writing career )

Well, she did say it helps to have a sense of humor...

BTW, "Crowded House Radio" on Pandora is BEYOND AWESOME. I've listened to about twenty-five tracks now and only come across one that I didn't like.

Inspired by lizbee's recent adoption of a meter for her own novel project, I proudly present one for Knife:

39,000 / 100,000 (39.0%)

This is assuming the book actually does end up at 100,000 words. Depending on how much more I cut and the length of the new stuff I put in, it may well be shorter.

Chapter Nine is going swimmingly so far, which is nice for a change.

I'm not dead! I'm only editing. Up to Chapter Five now, and almost back on schedule. Only problem is, to make my deadline (which is purely self-imposed, but necessary for my own mental discipline) I'm going to have to start getting more than one chapter done a week -- and since the next few chapters are going to involve a whole lot of rewriting from scratch, and I've also got a bunch of graphic design work to do by early September, things are not looking so good.

*whimpers*

But anyway, just so you know I'm still around. I also owe mistraltoes a ramble about May/December and kalquessa one about defending original characters, so if I make especially good progress on the book one day I may pop in here and do that.

Chapter Seventeen, otherwise known as the Chapter of Exposition Purgatory, is done!

Only it's now 81K, making it almost twice as long as any other chapter in the book. Erk. But at least I got rid of the massive info-dumpage and replaced it with some nifty flashback stuff (well, at least I think it's nifty now -- give me twenty-four hours to start hating it).

From here in it should be relatively smooth sailing, as nobody's told me to change anything major in the last three chapters, and therefore I shall wait for a professional editor to tell me if anything more needs fixing.

If the book gets that far, that is. One can only hope...

I shall be visiting the post office on Monday, D.V. And then I shall relax! And have fun! And do all that other stuff I've been neglecting, like cleaning the house, paying attention to the kids, making up the program for next week's coffee hour, etc.

*sigh* I can't wait.

Semagic has suddenly taken it upon myself to remind me of birthdays for a change -- how useful! -- so best wishes of the day to jblum, always one of my favorite Doctor Who writers and an all-around charming fellow. As it happens, you share a birthday with my oldest brother, so that will be easy for me to remember in future.

And to all the other people whose birthdays I have missed recently by virtue of using Semagic instead of the LJ Portal, please accept my apologies and belated congratulations. Congratulations also to lydaclunas and rose_in_shadow, both of whom will be graduating from university soon.

Now, for the big news...

KNIFE IS FINALLY FINISHED!!!

The really major edits, anyway. In response to the editor's recommendations and some excellent critical feedback from first-round betas yahtzee63 and shoebox2, I've rewritten large chunks of the text, rearranged others, and added about 15,000 words to the story in total.

Now I'm throwing it out to the second-round betas (the ones who've read the book in earlier drafts) in hopes of catching and fixing any remaining gaffes. But comments from folks like cesario and rose_in_shadow, who are reading the re-edited version as their first experience of the book, have been on the whole quite positive, so it seems unlikely that the next round of changes will take very long. All of which means that I should be able to send the ms. out by no later than the end of May, Lord willing -- the thought of which makes me very happy.

I shall end with what has to be one of my favorite reviews of Knife ever, from cesario's comments on Chapter Sixteen:

It's more than a love story with wings now, it's like creepy conspiracy spy thriller anarchist stuff. It's the bomb.

This pleased me enormously, which probably says something about my deep inner weirdness, but as Eeyore would say, there it is.