Paksworld

First: Happy Canada Day to you Canadians.

Second:   This may make you laugh.  It did me.   Critical scene–critical in terms of reader spatial orientation as well as reader “what’s happening” orientation.

And I got both direction (east v. west) and possibility wrong.   It was a plot bomb, and I was writing as fast as I could, but still!  East is east and west is west and if you go the wrong way you end up in the wrong place.   And one little three-letter word (“not”)  makes a huge difference.

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My editor sent me the Oath of Fealty ms., with Track Changes on it (her changes to my work on her revision request…) and I’m almost through working on it, after having my usual battle with Track Changes.  (Not a fan, though I can see the utility of it for editors.)    No progress on the maps this weekend, through trying to do too many things at once…the Track Changes thing, an e-interview, an article for a writing magazine, the map, enough work on the new new book to keep it awake and talking to me.

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The ideas continued into the evening (naturally, because I have house guests arriving.    Probably in less than two hours, now, and I’m still glued to the book.)

ANYway.   I’ve had to start re-writing because there are tricky things to convey.    This shouldn’t be too spoilerish, but if you’re highly concerned about spoilers, you might want to turn away.

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And lo, the book is now just under 170,000 words, which was my goal (not my editor’s insistence…she just said snippages might have to be made, and I was motivated to do my own snipping.)    Yes, Old MacDonald’s Farm was running through my head as I was doing the last part (you get silly,  if you weren’t to start with.  “Snip, snip here….snip, snip there…here a snip, there a snip, everywhere a snip, snip.”

In the process I found problems I would have sworn (falsely, it turns out) weren’t there, or had been fixed two weeks ago.   Surely I’d already corrected that clumsy phrase…was Word’s stupid little paper-clip assistant hopping along behind me and unfixing what I fixed?   Surely I’d already noticed that typo in a name (the name is Astil, not Astin…)  and fixed it…but no.  No also to the pair of semicolons side by side, the missing last letters on several words (! what was I thinking!), another couple of pronouns whose antecedents could be misunderstood…all the sawdust and bent nails on the floor of the novel-building workshop.   (Sweep, sweep, sweep,  but there’s always something…)

If there’s one mistake–one typo, one clunky phrase, one factual error, one continuity error–you folks will find it and (even though you’re probably too polite to do this) someone will wave it in the air like a trophy.   But I’m done.  I’m wiped.   It’s going back to my editor tomorrow, and maybe I won’t see it again until the copy editor’s tromped all over it.  Which reminds me, I need to work on a note of gentle guidance for the copy editor.

Final days of  my work based on the editor’s notes.   What left for NYC already a few thousand words shorter than it had been, is now almost 3000 words shorter than that…and you would not miss one of them.  Well…maybe a half dozen, but you’d have to have read it before.

How do editors and writers decide what to cut?  Well…think of the classic example: Michelangelo saying that to make a statue all you do is cut away the stone that doesn’t belong.    It’s much the same with words, though figuring out what doesn’t belong is a bit tougher.  After all, if you’re carving a cube, and there’s this triangular lump sticking out one side…that doesn’t belong.   If the “David” had chin-wattles, that wouldn’t belong.  But with a story, especially the first of several that share a story arc…does the bit about the pony and the wildcat belong or not?  (There was no bit about the pony and the wildcat: I just made that up.   I made the whole thing up, but you know what I mean…)

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This is only for those who know the Paks books well.

Remember Vladi, the Cold Count, and Vladi’s Spears?   Vladi ran/runs a polearm mercenary company.    Somewhere in Paks I, I think his full name is given, probably in a conversation about other companies with one of the sergeants.   I can’t find it; I thought it was either of two places and it wasn’t.   I don’t have Paks I in a format this computer can read (I have a floppy *somewhere*…haven’t found it, any more than I’ve found the background notebooks. )

I know he’s supposed to be Kostandanyan…and it would really help to have his full name, if it’s there (if it’s only the background notebooks, I’m sunk.)

When I looked at the one editorial request that I just could not make work, and then finally figured it out, I realized it was a perfect example for study.   My editor correctly noted that the emotional high point of a relationship’s end was not at the end…there was an anticlimax scene.

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For the past week, I’ve been working on the revisions my editor sent me (in two parts), and it occurred to me that the process might be interesting to you.  I can’t share exactly what my editor said, because since she and I both know what’s in the book, our communications are just about solid Spoiler.   But with a little judicious tweaking, I think I can give you a taste of the experience of being edited by an excellent editor, though it will reveal some of my weaknesses as a writer.

Editorial comments  fall into three basic categories: the surface-level error…the structural glitch….the foundational/design disaster.  Within quote marks is the original text; the comments outside quote marks are my editors, suitably trimmed to avoid spoilerish revelations.  Square brackets are where I inserted a substitute, non-spoiler, filler.

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I’m working on the character list for both the website and the book itself.  My own personal character list is organized by location and association (that is, all the Duke’s Company names together, all the Tsaian nobility together,  all the Girdish Marshals/paladins/etc. together.)

But it’s readers who will use this for something other than trying to ensure I don’t have fifteen names that all look and sound very similar in the same scene…which is what I use it for.   My editor will rule on what appears in the book(s) but tell me your preferences for character name lists ( questions follow.)

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This afternoon,  my editor’s comments came in, and at first glance look reasonable, doable, and slightly embarrassing (why didn’t  I think of that and do it that way first??   Because I was head deep in the characters and thinking their way, not writer-way.)

If I’d been able to climb out–which would’ve meant writing the whole entire story first–I might have seen this but possible not.   The temptation of a sequel group 20+ years after the original group is to carefully outline all the connections for readers so they don’t get “lost” and that can (and apparently does) stick out as great big *slow down and listen* checkpoints.

This can be fixed, and will be fixed, and thank heavens for a good, sympathetic, and clear-eyed editor who understands how and why it happened but also that it can’t be left there.  Until I’m done with at least the first round of this, it supercedes work on number 2, which is far enough along that it won’t lose too much momentum while I’m cleaning up number 1.    (And yes, this is why I’ve been pushing on as hard as I have, despite having months till deadline.  I knew a major cleanup was coming and wanted this one past any “stuck” places–or at least most of them–before leaving it for a bit.)

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