Blog entry July 2009

Sure, I can tweak it from now until the end of time, but the 3rd major pass is done.  I'm contacting beta-readers to see who can turn it around fairly quickly so I can get it off to the agent who's agreed to read it.

My fingers are crossed that I haven't screwed up anything too major... we shall see.  :-)

But... it's done.  I typed the first words of this book on 1/20/2006, so... it's been a long ride, and I can't believed how much I've learned in the process.

Now, I just need to write the other six related books, and edit the 1st manuscript I wrote, and the other three books of that series, and... and...

However... right now, I'm going to bask in the fact that after 3.5 years... it's done.

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I wiped myself out staying up so late last night, and accomplished basically nothing the entire day today.

But forced myself to get at least one chapter done.  It didn't take much work, just some word tweaking, but I can't do more.

It's 5k more words done, and that's a good thing.

Edit Progress (7/29/09)

Complete (99.2k of 113k)

I knew the pace would pick up once I got past the beginning of the book, but I must admit that today's accomplishment has pleased me.  And there is a good possibility that I will get the damn thing done tomorrow, or the next day at the latest.

Chapter 21, the last one I finished today, is originally chapter 17, and there are a total of 24 chapters in the draft.  So I have seven more chapters to edit, and I don't think there are very many changes in those chapters.

In the draft, the first 17 chapters encompassed 88k words, and the new draft is up to 95.3k words.  Giving me a finished estimate of about 120k words... about what I'd expected.

I want to do an editing pass with the grammar checker, and that will take a while, but the end is finally in sight!!!!

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I finished chapter 13 today, which required a fair amount of updating of chapter 12, because they're in essence one big scene.  But they are done and feel good.

Plus I did a first pass on chapter 14.  It only needs a once over when I have a few more brain cells.

More done, more to do, but getting there.

Edit Progress (7/27/09)

Complete (63.0k of 113k)

It was a busy day today with lots of non-writing stuff that needed to be done... but I was up at 6am with the story running through my head and got an early start.  So with a late ending added onto it, I managed to get Chapter 12 done, and another 4800 words edited. 

I ended up shuffling the chapter like a deck of cards to get everything to work out given the new beginning of the book.  In the end, I added ~400 words onto the count for the chapter, but I don't know how many were new words vs. how many removed words.

I think the next chapter will stand as it is, just a quick polish.  We'll see from there.

I'm debating how to make the status bar a little less biased because the 113k is the length of the draft I'm working from, and I've completed editing 47k words of that draft... editing them into 54k words in this draft.  How's a good way to portray that?  Must ponder. (Read more)

I'm not holding my breath that I'm finally done with the hard part, but I finally got a decent amount of words done today.  13.9k total words edited today.

The one scene that I thought was going to cause me terrible trouble actually mostly stood as it was in the previous draft... to my vast surprise.  A tiny bit of rewording, but nothing like the major rewrite I'd expected.

So, the bar moved quite a bit today, and I feel good about it.

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No wonder I was having trouble naming my characters in this book. 

After spending three hours sorting out all the people in the book, I get to the end discover I have 50 named characters in this book, plus a bunch of unnamed ones.  And the really disgusting thing is that almost all of them will appear in the other books in the series.

The amusing bit was that I've been working on this book for 3.5 years, and I just discovered today that I'd never named the heroine's brother.  He's always "my brother" or "your brother".  So, he's now officially named, and given the changes in the book, his name might actually show up in the book... but I kind of doubt it. (Read more)

One of my critique partners loves giving me hassles because I'm so anal about keeping track of stuff, and that's fine because I hassle him back because he isn't.  :-)

But I keep telling him that there's a reason for my madness... and a reason that I kick myself every time I let the organization fall to the back burner, like I have lately.

The reason for my madness is that today I realized that I have to change a character's name because I can't have "Mary", "Matilda", and "Margaret" all in the same scene. 

Okay... it's a reasonable thing that I change somebody's name, except... this book has a sub-cast of millions, and to make matters worse, this book has spun off six other books, which all have begun to take on lives of their own, including their own sub-casts of millions. (Read more)

The first pass on chapter 8 is done, but part of the reason it's done is because I re-chaptered the old chapters 5 & 6 into new chapters 8, 9 & 10, because both 5 and 6 were really long chapters that make much more sense as three chapters rather than just two chapters.

But progress is being made.

Edit Progress (7/22/09)

Complete (35.1k of 113k)

I declare chapter 7 done. 

I took it to critique group tonight, and they offered minor comments.  I brought it home, and futzed with the new part at the ending some, and I now declare it good enough.  I also moved a chuck that they said didn't fit up to chapter 3, where it fits better, so that feels like a minor accomplishment since it helped shorten this chapter up a tad.

The original chapters 1-4, clocking in at 23.5k words, have turned into chapters 1-7 and now clocked in at 30.5k words.  It should prove interesting to see what the rest of the book does to me.

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There's so many other things I should be doing, like doing paying work, but I can't, so I'm working on my book.

I finished a detail-edit of the first 19 pages of chapter 7, so that gives me 29.6k words done.  I have three pages left on chapter 7, but they basically need a total re-write, so I will leave them until after lunch.

Edit Progress (7/21/09)

Complete (29.6k of 113k)

For the longest time I haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with me.  No energy.  No ambition.  No motivation.  No drive to do anything.  No creativity.  No interest in much of anything.  No wanting to go anyplace or see anybody.

I knew I wasn't "depressed".  I've been depressed and that wasn't it.  So I called it "situational depression", but that didn't feel correct either.

Then last night I finally got hit by the flash of the obvious that made me feel as stupid as usual.

I'm burned out.

I knew it felt familiar, in a been-there-done-that sort of way, but I couldn't line up the triggers... because my two other cases of burn-out where work related, and I'm not "working" now. (Read more)

Finished chapter 6 today instead of working on paying work.  Probably not a good idea, but I really wanted to get the blasted chapter done.

Then I started on chapter 7.  I did a first edit pass, changing the obvious stuff and taking care of all the notes I'd written on various copies of the draft.  Then read it through and have a whole slew of hand-written updates to input tomorrow.

Most of the chapter stands as is, except for the last couple pages.  But this chapter was part of last week's pondering, so I pretty much know how I want it to go down.

I have my fingers crossed that I can get it done tomorrow.

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I was tired of #1-son sitting around playing video games so I put him to work porting my old blogs to here.  Tedious, but useful.  I'd been dreading doing it, but I really wanted all my blog entries in one place so I could search them, so it was perfect for him to do and well worth the investment.  #3-son helped him, which made it go faster. 

#3-son was also very useful this last couple days since two of my websites got hit by a comment spammer... to the tune of about 120,000 comments on one of the sites.  And there apparently is no easy way to take massive amounts of comments off at once.  So, my kid went to work cleaning up the site for me.  He clocked his hours, and I'm happy to pay him to do it because it's such a huge load off my mind. (Read more)

Made some progress on chapter 6 today.  I input a whole slew of notes to chapter 6 and previous chapters, and did a polish edit on what's currently there in chapter 6.

Next I need to work in the plot-bits that need to be added... which is always a challenge because it flows so well now that I'm not exactly sure where to put them.  But I need to do it, so I will.

Edit Progress (7/16/09)

Complete (24.8k of 113k)

While I've been puzzling out the plot-intricacies of my book, I've been thinking a lot about plots, and plotting theory, and all kinds of plot-related things.  Which brought me to thinking about plot-heavy books... and in the midst of all my thinking, I was able to put some concepts into words that weren't there before.

Let's start by defining "plot-heavy" or "wholly plot-driven" as: a book with only minimal characterization and scene setting. (Read more)

I can't sleep now, but hoping I can shortly.  In the meantime, I thought I'd ask y'all a question.

I'm positive that a long time ago (15-years maybe) I read a book, that I'm positive was by James P. Hogan, about a guy who gets recruited to solve a couple of murders... murders that were a big deal because the president wasn't actually just one person but 5 clones of one person, all specially trained in different aspects of being president, and now two of the clones are dead and the others in danger... so this guy has to solve the murders, and of course he does.

I was also positive the book was down on my bookshelf. 

Except it isn't.  And it appears to not even be a JPH book.  In fact, after a couple fruitless hours searching on the web, it appears to not be a book at all.

Am I crazy?  Did I really read this book?  Or not?

Anybody know?

Read a book over the weekend that I wanted to throw against the wall, and made me tempted to not read the author again, even though I've very much liked many of her previous books.  (Book is a historical romance)

Heroine was raised by her gambler-rake of a father and carted all over hell and back while her father gambled to earn money.  Heroine believed her mother died when she was two, and heroine's only friend is a make-believe-sister.  Needless to say, with this upbringing, the heroine is convinced she's so ruined in society that she'll never marry.  The book basically begins when she learns of her father's death.

**long story ensues, then toward the very end**

Heroine finds out that father's very much alive, but the reason that he hasn't bothered to get in touch with her is because father has spent the last couple months with mother (who isn't dead either) and twin sister (who shares name of imaginary sister).  (Read more)

Went to dinner with a friend and thought plotting thoughts.  I need to add another plot arc about control: the movement from illusion-of-contol to control-is-an-illusion.

Interestingly enough, the last half of the arc is already in the book.  So now I just need to add the first half of the arc.  But what is the first half of that arc?

Should prove interesting to see if I can pull it off.

The progress for that day is that I now know the plot changes that need to go into the last half of chapter 6, and hopefully I can get to them tomorrow.

Not much else accomplished today, but some days you gotta accept what you've got.

I have so much that I should be doing that I'm completely overwhelmed, and so much of it is stuff that I don't want to do which isn't helping in the least... so I let myself get sidetracked.

When did I begin to write my very first manuscript?  Gwen & Doug's story?

So, went up to my closet, pulled out my old journals... turns out they weren't in order like I thought, so had to put them into order, then begin thumbing through them... and finally found it: (Read more)

As I've said before, writing books without a plot is a damn-stupid thing to do, but I did it, so now I have to fix it.  One of the repercussions of not having a plot is having a whole bunch of scenes without plot-related changes in them... no plot -> no plot movement.  I thought I'd fixed all these in the previous draft when I inserted a plot into this book, but I didn't.

The entire of the original chapter 3 has no plot movement, not the tiniest bit of plot movement.  Which left me with four scenes that I need either junk or add plot to them.  Because the scenes are required for lots of other reasons, I couldn't junk them, so I needed to add plot to them.

If you've been reading this blog, you've heard me complaining how long it took me to figure out what plot bits to add to the first 3 scenes (new chapter 5 and 1st-half of chapter 6)... with those done, I didn't think it would take me very long to add the bit to the fourth scene. (Read more)

Spent four hours today with a gal I've been mentoring (or playing Literary Midwife, whichever you want to call it) mostly talking about plotting.  Since plotting is what I've been dealing with lately in this edit, it's always useful for me to try to explain it to somebody else.  While we were indeed talking about her books, making myself explain the concepts made things more solid for me.

After we got done, and I got other stuff out of the way, I went over Jack Bickham's "Scene and Structure" book, because I needed to look his explanations over again to redraw the illustration I made for the concepts in the book.  I think I've puzzled that out, and tomorrow if I get a minute I'll redraw it, which I think will really help me. (Read more)

There, that little bit is done.  I couldn't face it yesterday, but this morning I was able to just sit down and do it. 

The good news is that it came out very well, and I think the rest of the chapter pretty much stands as it is.

But I have to go to lunch today to talk about plotting with one of my writing students, so I have to get ready for that.

Anybody interesting in a Victorian cookbook?  I love google books.

So a little bit more is done, and I'm over a hump, which are both good.

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After three hours yesterday afternoon, I finished a detailed edit of chapter 5.  Took the kid out to dinner at Arby's.  Then came back and began on chapter 6.

Needed to make a few changes later on in the chapter, but at the beginning I needed the heroine to finally look at the clock and realize that one of her guys hadn't woken her up when he said he would, and now it's considerably later than she thought.  So what does the guy do?  The guy who until this point has been young and innocent and wouldn't hurt a fly...  Does he admit that they are all scheming behind her back?  Does he evade?  Does he distract?  No.

The s.o.b LIES to her!!!  He flat out LIES to her!

The words came off my fingers, appeared on the screen, and I looked at them, then screeched in moral outrage.  HE LIED TO HER!!  (Read more)

Silly me, I should know better than to add things up, because the answer always scares me.

I wondered how many hours I've put into the edit of this book so far, not the entire edit, just the edit of the last draft to this draft.  So, I looked back at old blog entries, and added up the low-end numbers.

I've spent at least 51 hours editing chapters 1-5 (original chapters 1, 2 and half of 3), and that doesn't include thinking and pondering time, that's just active sitting-in-front-of-the-computer-editing time.

No wonder I'm terrified about how long it's going to take to edit the rest of the stupid book, I have 23 more chapters to go and it's taken me 51 hours to edit 3 chapters!!!  **where's a blasted paper bag?**

Okay, deep calming breath... (Read more)

Well, I have some brush-up to do on it as a result of tonight's critique meeting, but after 5 hours of work on it today-- including 1300 new words -- it's close enough to done to call it that.

Good, bad, or otherwise, 15,400 words at the beginning of the old draft of this manuscript have turned into 21,200 words in the new draft. 

The interesting thing is that the people who read it say it moves much faster... with almost 6000 more words (2k moved from later in book, 4k new words), it moves faster.  Huh.  Who'd have thunk it.  Not me, that's for sure.  :-)  I guess it all depends on the words. (Read more)

So here I am... I've gotten good responses back on the beginning of Sarah's book, and I declare myself finally ready to take the plunge and enter the 1st chapter in some contests.  The RWA chapter contests are a great way to get it under the notice of some editors and agents, without all the layers of slush readers, for a reasonable fee. 

My plan for this morning, therefore, was to go through the listing of contests and send the silly thing off.  And, the gods smiled upon me, this morning's email contained a new list of contests. 

Like a good girl (for a change) I carefully went through the list... and not one single one of them had a contest category for my type of book.  Contests that ended two or three months ago all had my category, but not the contests taking entries when my book is finally ready.  Of course.  **shaking head**  Typical. (Read more)

I gave my first chapters to my critique partners, asking for comments before I send them off to the agent.

And... as always... be careful what you ask for. 

So far, so good on the first four chapters, but I gave chapter five to one of them and the comment came back was "what's the purpose of this chapter?" 

Fudge! That's not what I wanted to hear.

Now, back to Plotting 101 to see what the point of the chapter really is, and if I need to beef up the plot-bits or dump parts of the chapter.  (Read more)