Paksworld

Sleep, Shakespeare said, knits up the raveled sleeve of care.   I wish something would knit up the raveled sleeve of prose when loose ends of yarn are hanging out and there’s not a knitting needle in sight.    However, the authorial crochet hook is working hard.  (My mother, who was incredibly good at needlework, pointed out one day that knitting and crochet are the same thing, really, except geometrically in some relationship I forget.  Upside down and backwards, maybe.)

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Though I can almost hear the cries of Woe! No! from here, the braiding process always results in dropping some overwritten sections (or parts of them) and tightening this and adding to that.  Unlike cooking, where once you put the salt or the spices in, they’re in for the duration, writing allows do-overs…trying whether something works and then removing it if it doesn’t.  (Would love to have had that option the time I put way too much tarragon in the tarragon chicken!!)

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(GRUMP: just erased the whole post I was about to send.  My right little finger hit *something* (I wasn’t looking at it, so don’t know) and it all disappeared.  So this is not the post you would’ve had but the post’s general gist as I remember it after that moment of shock, useless attempts at recovery, and then writing a GRUMP.)

This week has been about reorganizing the POV sections into chronological order and writing connections when the lack of them became apparent.  I’ve also been noting places were cuts could be made later, to accommodate the additional material that will bring the book to the conclusion I’m trying to achieve…for which I need a LOT more room.    Right now the book’s just under 163,000 words,  but it changes daily up and down as this is trimmed slightly and that is added for connectivity and this other bit now turns out to be wrong, and here I’ve added a chunk…etc.    There’s a lot of front-loading in this book, so anything trimmed there has to be carefully done so the plot-threads can run smoothly on, without fraying to nothing later.

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In Kings of the North, which only the alpha readers among you have yet read,  the POV characters leave Aarenis at the end of the campaign season, so whatever happens there between, say, a few tendays before the Autumn Evener  and Midwinter is offstage for that book.   And in that book, what happens in Aarenis isn’t relevant to that book, but it is relevant to the next…the one I’m on now.

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Kings of the North has now traveled down the hall (so to speak) from Editorial to Production, as Editor called yesterday with one last tweak–and then approved the tweak I provided.    A few more things need to be sent off–the front matter stuff, dedication and the like, and a map specific to this book–but basically it’s now on the cog railway towards its emergence next year as a book on the shelf.

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Very early this morning (one-ish, with some leftover until two-ish)  I finally got the main revision tangle sorted out.    Slept a few hours and went back over everything this morning before sending it off to Editor.  Naturally found new things to smooth out, including one word change Editor wanted that I’d forgotten about.

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Sleep helped.   I had other things to do yesterday afternoon but slept about four hours and about seven more overnight.   Looking at my attempt to start on the last revision puzzle yesterday…I should’ve waited until after the sleep.

However, it’s a puzzle that some of you may find interesting, and I hope to keep it spoiler-free.

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…and tomorrow the book’s out in the stores.  I hope you in the US are as excited as I am, and that if you pre-ordered online, your copies arrive on your doorstep (or whatever you use) on time tomorrow.    (Those of you in Europe who already have the UK version…try not to hand out too many spoilers.  At least until the end of the week, OK?)

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Some of you may remember the posts I did last year during the Spring Revision Season, but some of you weren’t here yet, so I’ll chatter away as if you couldn’t look up the posts by category and find them (but go ahead if you want.)   Editor-revisions are basically the same as any other revision except that Editor has more experience and more clout even than DRW and Karen S- and Ellen M-.

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You would be SO happy that Editor sends me these, if you knew what gets fixed before you ever see the book.   I know some of  you think you’d like the raw, untouched text better, but…no.  Seriously,  editors…and Editor in particular…make books better.  So did the alpha readers and my agent, all of whom had comments that made me rethink some things.

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