angelakorrati.com » lament: fourth draft

Hey, Lament beta readers?

annathepiper — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:12:41 +0000

I haven’t heard anything out of anyone besides , so if any of you all have anything to say to me about the novel, do please let me know tonight if possible. If you don’t have anything you think is a shipstopper, I want to get the thing sent off to Ms. Fox tomorrow! Thanks… more

Mobi-format Lament of the Dove

annathepiper — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:45:53 +0000

So if you happened to be thinking, “Hey Anna, I’d love to beta read Lament of the Dove for you, only I don’t have it on my Kindle/Sony Reader/iPhone running Stanza or some other appropriate Mobi-friendly reader app”, worry no more. has your back!

She’s kindly converted my RTF file for Lament into Mobi format and informs me that it can be “just drag-and-dropped into a Kindle’s ‘documents’ directory, or sync’d onto a Sony Reader, or used with Stanza on the Mac or on an iPhone, etc.”

All props to ! And if anybody wants this version of the file, sing out and I’ll fire it your way. Formatting may not be perfect but it should be readable!

My word, I think I'm done

annathepiper — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:45:42 +0000

All in all, not quite to the full 20K edited out, but I did make it down to 118K or so. So I’ll take this and run with it!

This means, folks, that Lament of the Dove‘s fourth draft is now open for beta reading. As I’ve mentioned, I only need people to read through it and make sure that it holds together. In-depth proofreading is not required (although sure, if you see any typos or anything, call them out).

If at all possible I’d like to send the manuscript off to Ms. Fox by Monday of next week, so if you can read over the story this week, sing out. Throw me an email at my annathepiper gmail address, and let me know where I can send you the RTF to read. Thanks in advance, all!

Edited today: -467
Chapter 24 revised total: 5,925
Postlude revised total: 1,185
Lament of the Dove revised and final total (fourth draft): 118,358

Day 9: Last night's tally, almost there

annathepiper — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:11:07 +0000

Finished off Chapter 23 and made decent inroads on Chapter 24 yesterday, and am getting very, very close to the end. I’m under 119K at this point, and even if I don’t make a hard 20,000 words removed, I can deal with this. So as soon as I finish Chapter 24 and the epilogue, I’ll be putting out the call for people who want to beta read this thing for me.

Today, being the Fourth of July, will have somewhat less editing efforts tonight. This afternoon, though, is a different story–or at least it will be as soon as I get back from taking a walk outside in the sunshine of glory. More later.

Edited last night: -589
Chapter 23 revised total: 4,767
Chapter 24 revised total: 6,297
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 118,825

Day 8, a day late: Last night's editing goodness

annathepiper — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:53:48 +0000

This being what I pulled off in editing land last night before I went to bed, too bleary to bother to make a post. I knocked a couple hundred more words out of Chapter 22, and started putting a dent in 23; all in all, a decent night’s work!

As expected, I was able to tighten up the entire sequence where Julian and Faanshi and the elves break into the abbey; I think that bit alone was good for a thousand words or so. I sacrificed some decent enough descriptions, but in the name of brevity and pacing, this close to the end, I think it’s for the best.

Now into 23, which is the big climax where Super Annie appears to wreak havoc. Not sure yet how many more words I’ll be able to yoink out of here. But today, I shall give it a go. About 2,900 more words to go!

Edited last night: -330
Chapter 22 revised total: 3,931
Chapter 23 revised total: 5,060
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 119,414

Edity marathon of editing, Day 7: This is more like it

annathepiper — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:40:54 +0000

I must have eaten my Editor Wheaties for breakfast this morning. (Which is funny, because I could have sworn I had a ham and cheese bagel sandwich.) I have just trimmed the hell out of Chapter 22, focusing on the sequence where Faanshi, Julian, and the elves scout out the abbey. I decided there was actually quite a bit of cruft verbiage there, and no real need to linger on describing ‘yeah, it’s twilight, the abbey’s busy having vespers, nobody’s out, they get to break into the postern gate because inexperienced Faanshi and one-handed Julian aren’t going to climb over a wall’. ‘Cause seriously, the good stuff? That’s getting them inside to Kestar.

Anyway, I am suddenly quite a bit closer to the 20K goal after all, and Chapter 22 has had about 1,100 words yoinked out of it. Here are last night’s and tonight’s stats.

Edited last night: -314
Edited tonight: -902
Chapter 22 revised total: 4,144
Chapter 23 revised total: 5,177
Chapter 24 revised total: 6,593
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 119,744

Day 6: My estimates may be off!

annathepiper — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:57:41 +0000

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

annathepiper — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:00:11 +0000

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!

annathepiper — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:45:23 +0000

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

annathepiper — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:51:24 +0000

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