Monthly Archives: June 2009
Day 6: My estimates may be off!
| June 30, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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So I started into more of Chapter 22 tonight, only to discover that actually, re-reading it, I’m pretty happy with the bulk of it. I’ve only succeeded in taking out another 110 or so words tonight.
I therefore went on through Chapter 23 and Chapter 24, and came to much the same conclusion. I’m really rather lacking on too many extraneous words in these chapters. I’m going to make another pass through both of them over the next few nights, but it’s seeming like I may be closer to the end of this draft than I thought. I may not quite hit the 20K, but if I can pull the total word count down under 120K, I think I’ll be happy with that.
Stay tuned for further details. I’ll post an actual number update tomorrow night.
Editing, Day 5: This is pretty good
| June 29, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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Chapter 22 edits are now underway, and I’ve taken out nearly 170 words. Very close to dipping down under the 120K mark, which is a nice milestone to have so near. I’m pretty sure I won’t need to do anything but word count reduction here–and I’m thinking that the whole sequence where Faanshi, Julian, and the elves break into the abbey can be tightened significantly. Don’t know if I’ll be able to hit a full K out of this chapter, but I’ll give it a college try.
Stopping reasonably early tonight though on account of trying to get caught up on sleep. Better for the writing braincells thattaway.
Edited tonight: -168
Chapter 22 revised total: 5,156
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 120,960
Edit-a-thon Day 4: Winner is me!
| June 28, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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I have successfully beaten 1,000 words out of Chapter 21! And man, this entire chapter was an exercise in asking myself really difficult questions about whether many sentences if not entire paragraphs really, really needed to be there.
I think I’ll call it a wrap on this chapter then, and move on to Chapter 22 tomorrow night. By my running tally I need to kill about another 4,600 words but I’ll be happy with a rough estimate of 4K.
Three chapters to go and the epilogue. I’m getting there.
Edited tonight: -91
Chapter 21 revised total: 5,891
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,128
Yet more editing: Day 3
| June 28, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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Yeah yeah yeah I know, technically this is supposed to be Day 4. But had a birthday dinner last night, and by the time I got home I was too full of tasty food and b00zah0l to muster enough brain for editing, what can I say?
So I edited today instead, and succeeded in beating Chapter 21 down under 6,000 words. I’ve killed about 900 words in it all told, and could probably stand to kill another hundred to be on track with the goal of reading 117K by the end of the book. I will therefore see if I can kill another hundred in it tomorrow before I move on to Chapter 22!
Edited today and tonight: -242
Chapter 21 revised total: 5,982
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,219
Edit-a-thon, Day 2
| June 25, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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I think last night’s estimate was about right: turns out I killed 260 words out of Chapter 21 tonight. The page count is down to 26, but the 26th page is really only half a page, and with judicious pruning I might be able to kill the rest of that page too. We’ll see tomorrow night.
In addition to just general verbiage reduction, I found at least a couple more places where I could eliminate sentences that were not absolutely critical to the action. It’ll be amusing to me at some point to compare my style in the first draft of this thing with my style in the fourth.
Edited tonight: -260
Chapter 21 revised total: 6,224
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,461
Lament of the Dove edit watch: Day 1!
| June 25, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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About 200 words tonight killed in Chapter 21. Page count of that chapter went down another page from 28 to 27. Biggest edit: deleted an entire paragraph in which I rather fancied the imagery but in which I had to make myself realize that actually, it didn’t really need to be there.
There’s another six pages or so that I haven’t scanned through yet in this chapter, and I don’t know yet what this means in terms of how many more words I’ll be able to kill from it. Another couple of hundred, if I’m lucky; a net loss of 600 or so on the chapter feels kind of light to get me to the goal, though.
We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Edited tonight: -204
Chapter 21 revised total: 6,484
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,721
Meanwhile, this ought to be fun
| June 24, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Short Pieces |
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My editor has asked me if I would be interested in submitting a piece for a new Drollerie Press anthology set during the years of the Civil War. I’ve told her yes, and am playing with an idea set in the same universe as Faerie Blood, with a working summary that goes something like this:
A young slave woman who’s gifted with healing magic and who’s on the run on the Underground Railroad comes across a Warder who’s been driven off his territory by the war (possibly due to being forcibly conscripted into either army, but more due to battle on his Warded ground tainting his connection to the land and driving him around the bend); she’s trying to escape slavery, he’s fleeing from the army as well as his own madness. They are driven out onto Roanoke Island, which has been haunted ever since the disappearance of the colony there nearly three hundred years ago–by the ghost of its last Warder, who has been lingering there ever since the colony was wiped out. My hero and heroine have to join forces to not only cleanse the island, but also to defend it against a resurgence of whatever nasty supernatural thing wiped out the colony–and my heroine has to choose between continuing her flight north, and accepting her own magic and helping the Warder soldier establish a new bond to the island so that both he and the ghost can find some peace.
I’m going to look forward to writing this out.
In an attempt to kick myself into gear…
| June 24, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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… I emailed agent Diana Fox, who y’all may remember I last approached this past fall regarding Lament, to ask her whether it’s still okay for me to submit the revised version of the manuscript to her for consideration. She says yes.
This means I am now setting myself the goal to not only finish the edit pass on the fourth draft but also get it beta-read before , , and I head to Disneyland on the 9th. I have four more chapters and an epilogue to finish editing, and thankfully at this point, I think I’ve passed all the bits that need major surgery. So it should be down to a question of word count reduction.
Y’all consider this an early warning then that I’m going to need a beta reader or three to sanity-check this thing for me before I fire it off at Ms. Fox. The level of effort required here would simply be to read over the manuscript and make sure it hangs together coherently–since I’ll have killed 20,000 words out of it, and in some places significantly tweaked events, I’ll need to make sure all of these changes have made it an overall leaner and meaner story. Significant tweaking in particular has been done with Faanshi’s portrayal, trying to strengthen her as a character, and I need to make sure that works too.
General proofreading will also be welcome but not required.
So if anybody thinks they may have free cycles in the week or so before July 9th and will have time to chug through about 117K worth of novel, let me know!
And now, Chapter 21
| June 22, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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Started digging into Chapter 21 tonight as planned. The results of tonight’s efforts: 200-some-odd eliminated words, which so far makes up for the extra words added to Chapter 20. And I think I killed about a page and a half all told; the file started at 29 pages, and now I’m down to 28, and page 28 is only about half full. I hit page 13 before I decided it was bedtime.
This’ll do. We’ll see if I can kill a couple more hundred words in this chapter before I hit the end.
Edited tonight: -203
Chapter 21 revised total: 6,688
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,925
June 2009 Drollerie blog tour, at last!
| June 22, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Drollerie Press |
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Y’all can find the master post for this month’s Drollerie Press blog tour over here. Check it out for all the other posts besides the ones I’m hosting, on the theme of fathers! And when you go check out the posts, tell ‘em I sent you.
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