Posts Tagged by lament: fourth draft
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
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
Chapter 20, finally!
| June 21, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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Apparently I need to wander off to Canada more often, if it means I can actually finish up a chapter. Did a little bit of poking at Chapter 20 of Lament on Thursday night, more yesterday morning in Vancouver, and a bit more tonight–and realized that yeah, I was ready to go on ahead to the end of the file.
So this means the fourth draft of Chapter 20 is finally done. The biggest change to this turned out to be pulling a bit of interaction between Kirinil and Faanshi out of a previous version of Chapter 17, since I wanted that here for Kirinil generally magically checking Faanshi out.
And this means that at last, I can move on to Chapter 21. And hopefully pick up some serious speed with the editing. Chapter 21 is a Kestar chapter and I don’t plan any major edits here, so it should all be word count reduction.
Let’s see if I can get that chapter finished off by the end of the week. It’d be nice, too, if I can finish the edit pass by the time I’m ready to go to Disneyland.
Edited since Thursday: -69
Chapter 20 revised total: 4,733
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,128
Back to it, she said hopefully
| June 17, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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A couple more pages of Chapter 20 tonight, even though it felt like pulling teeth to do it. I’ve finally reached the part of the chapter where a bit I’d previously excised from Chapter 17 needs to come back in–so I’ve had a sudden jump in word count, to the tune of a few hundred words. This is, as I’ve said before, the wrong direction.
But I’m hoping I’ll be able to make up for it once I finish slogging through this chapter and get into Chapter 21, where I can hopefully do some serious verbiage reduction.
But I think a few pages tonight is all I’m up for. More tomorrow. She hopes.
Edited tonight: +256
Chapter 20 revised total: 4,802
Lament of the Dove revised total: 122,197
Falling down on the job (Lament)
| June 16, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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I have been very, very lame trying to deal with Lament, and tonight, along with medical stress, the nagging of my conscience got just too much to deal with.
So I went back and doublechecked where I’d left off in Chapter 20, and made myself work through a few more pages of editing just because I need to bloody well restore my habit of working on the thing if I ever want to get it finished. So, status check: on page 11 of 19 in the chapter, and holding steady around 4,500 words. Fortunately the scene with Faanshi and Alarrah, the first scene they have together after Faanshi finds out a Certain Thing about herself and Alarrah, needed less tweaking than I thought it would.
We’ll see if I feel like doing more of this tomorrow.
Edited since the last time I worked on this thing, which was too long ago: +37
Chapter 20 revised total: 4,546
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,491
My muse demands bronzeriders, who knew?
| May 14, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
I just finished writing 500 words or so about a bronzerider character I used to write for Telgar Weyr, the offline Pern fan club group I used to be in, and which is making noises about resurrecting itself lately. This is pertinent to my writing efforts because, for the first time in many months, I felt my brain leap at the idea of revisiting a lot of stories that I never did get to finish when the club fell over before.
So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been distracted with that. Which is, I know I know, not exactly conducive to me getting Lament of the Dove done. But I can say this: after writing that snippet about J’marr, I felt a lot more sanguine about poking at Lament, and I fired up Chapter 20 and went through a couple of (fairly light) pages of editing until realizing I needed to bugger off to bed.
Apparently my muse has just been jonesing to write about a hot young bronzerider. If that’s what it takes to get my ass back in gear, I am happy to oblige it!
I’m still in Chapter 20, although my mental page pointer has moved ahead from page 4 to page 7. And now I’m in the good bit of this chapter–the scene with Faanshi trying to deal with what she’s discovered about Alarrah. Let’s see what happens next.
Edited tonight: Net loss of zero, actually, although I did take out a few words and put a few others in
Chapter 20 revised total: 4,509
Lament of the Dove revised total: 121,904
Wait, what, Chapter 19 is done?!
| April 22, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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I should have actually posted about this on Saturday, only I was entirely distracted by the fun of going to see State of Play. Which of course leads me around to a traditional fallback of mine any time something sets back my writing: blaming Russell Crowe. (All my typos are his fault, you know.)
But I did actually finish up Chapter 19 on Saturday, one last little gasp through the final pages. Which means Chapter 20 is now finally on tap, and I began a cursory poking at it today. It is a measure of how long it’s been since I’ve actually worked on that chapter that I forgot completely about the opening scene in it, to wit, Ulima Secretly Plotting Secret Plots. But once I remembered that, I was able to mentally call up the rest of what to expect. Faanshi and Alarrah’s conversation scene is going to have to be completely redone, and if possible, I want to revisit some of the content I had to cut from this draft’s Chapter 17. Specifically, the bit where Kirinil actually checks Faanshi out magically for the first time.
So the beginning of Chapter 20 probably won’t change much, but most of the rest should wind up looking fairly different. I may have to write out a summary before I tackle it in prose.
And oh yes: pre-emptive thanks are going to have to go out to the spouse of one of my fellow Drollerie authors, who has kindly offered to beta read this draft for me when I finish it. For that matter, my editor at Drollerie also kindly offered to give it a once-over, although she knows I’m intending to fire this book at agents. I mention this not only to give them both public appreciation, but also to hold myself accountable for, y’know, actually finishing the draft. Note to self: YOU’RE ON NOTICE. GET WITH IT.
Edited up to tonight: -157
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,252
Chapter 20 revised total: 4,509
Lament of the Dove revised total: 121,904
Last couple of pages finally
| April 12, 2009 | Posted by annathepiper under Lament of the Dove |
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Closing in on the tail end of Chapter 19, at last. It’ll feel good to finish this up.
I know I’ve said this before, but it continues to amaze me how much better Faanshi (to me at least) comes across when I tighten up her dialogue and actions. Even if I don’t actually change her words much. I’m hopeful I am now better walking that line between keeping her gentle and making her strong.
Edited tonight: -58
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,362
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 122,061
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