Paksworld

It’s now clear to me that there’s no way I can finish the revisions before Tuesday, when I leave for St. Louis and then, some days later, points north and east.

Several important responses, from which I expect much impetus to rearrange & rewrite, haven’t come in.   I need to do laundry, shop for remaining things I need for the trip (like more cardstock for more business cards) and I have to sing both services tomorrow.   Time has run out.

Nonetheless, from responses received and my own re-reading, progress is being made, just slower than I wanted.   I really wanted to be able to present Book Two, all combed and brushed, with its boots spit-shined and its perfectly arranged insignia bright, to my editor when I get to NYC, but…it’s not going to happen.  Not like that.  If she wants to see it, she’ll see it in a state where I don’t normally let editors discover what a mess even the late drafts are.     Editors, like agents and alpha readers, always want to meddle…and editors come cloaked in Authority.   If they decide something’s a problem early, then they’re likely to demand that it vanish from the book, even if the real problem is that I haven’t yet made it obvious enough why it belongs and is absolutely essential to the final resolution of six lines of  plot.  (I may not know yet…and writer-not-knowing is but putty in the hands of Editors, who know not only many books but also how the sausage of publishing is made.)

I will snag one of the dilatory experienced alphas by the short hairs when I visit her after the Ninc conference–she will not escape me then.   Heh-heh-heh.    The one I thought I had trapped earlier this week made an agile feint and retreat.   And time’s run out, and I’ve just spent 41 minutes online answering email, removing spam from all the spam buckets, answering a few comments here and there.

I must get ready for the trip.  I’d rather work on the book.  WHY did I agree to the trip???  (NB–I’ll enjoy it once the train starts to move.  I always do.  But the book, which wants to be done, isn’t done, and can’t be done by time to leave, and that’s like an itch you can’t scratch. )

I’m back from Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas, where I spent yesterday (drove down Sunday and back today, through rainstorms.)    It was a lovely trip, and I enjoyed the five classes, luncheon, and evening program (though I was hoarse by the end of it–I like to talk but I’m not used to talking that much in one day!)    Professors and students were delightful, as were the people who showed up for the Monday Night Fiction meeting.

I took the printouts of the alpha reader comments with me and worked on them Sunday evening and very early Monday morning–I woked up with a headache at 4 am and had a brainstorm, so got in several hours of work before heading for the university.  Now that I’m home, and the suitcase is unpacked and a load of wash churning away…I can transfer those notes to the main file.  (Because I took the laptop along, but did I take the thumb drive with the book on it?  Nooo….)

I mentioned at some point that I was going on with revisions while the alpha readers were doing their thing…and this meant that (DUH on my part) none of the page numbers were right by the time the comments arrived.  However, I could still tell where they went; it just took longer.

So…back to work.

Page proofs are the stage of proofing where you realize what you should have done in revisions (but didn’t), and copy edits (ditto.)    And you can’t make big changes in page proofs.  Well, not without arousing the fury of everyone involved, anyway.

But there are compensations.

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Next stage in production: the page proofs (same as galleys in the old days) arrived today while I was in the city.    Page proof  errors beyond a certain number are charged to the writer (they cost money, that is)  so the only things that can be changed in proof are little things (like a missing quotation mark, or a misspelled word.)

These are physical pages (and must be physical pages–part of what you’re looking for is typographical errors due to the software going from manuscript pages to book-design pages) and I can tell you I’m already getting a shiver, just glancing at the first ones–they’ve used that distinctive font for the chapter heads and it’s beautiful.   However, I have a lot of pages to go over and the deadline, so I will be diving into that rather than working on book two revisions or book three first draft until it’s done.  Or posting here, most likely.

Not sure how long that will take–depends in part on how many interruptions there are.  But I’ll start tomorrow early.     (Never start page proofs this late at night–tired eyes aren’t good for proofreading.)

It rained in the city again today, but up here has only drizzled some.  Still, drizzle’s better than dry.

Fortuitous combination: a couple of days ago,  I got my contributor’s copy of the October Writer’s Digest in which I have a (commissioned) article on SFWA.  Naturally it became the instant “in the throne-room” reading (it’s new, it’s different) and though I’m no longer a novice writer, there’s still stuff to learn.

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Thank you Google (NOT) for costing me some days of work to fill out your stupid forms to remove my work from your clutches.

It is impossible for a writer to just say “Do not include any of my work in your digitization.”  It’s not even possible to say “Do not include any editions of this work, foreign or domestic.”  No, you have to go through the whole damnfool search & destroy procedure for every single version of every single title and sometimes you hit the wrong button and have to start over.

Also I’m printing out the current draft of Book Two because I need to see it off the screen.   So there will be a hiatus until I’ve dealt with Google (not, alas, with a flaming sword) and gotten my stuff “claimed.”

Those of you waiting for word on being alpha readers, or having already cleared the hurdle and waiting for the whole ms, my apologies.  The wait will last a bit longer.  I’m not spending my Saturday dozing in the sun, I can tell you that!

I’ve been told I’ll be getting the page proofs early in September.   This is the step that produces ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies, or review copies.)   As of September, we’re only six months from publication…scary thought.

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Today I read a bit of the new book to an unselected audience for the first time: a scene with as much interest and as few spoilers as I could find.  This was at ArmadilloCon.

The audience liked it, but you have to understand it was Sunday at a science fiction convention and everyone was looking a bit (some more than a bit) glazed.  All except one soul who apparently thought this was a critique group and not the reading of something finished, and explained what she thought needed to be changed.  (Hint: don’t do this.  It’s like the old joke about trying to teach a pig to sing–you can’t, and it only annoys the pig.  The book’s in production, as I told her with as much gentleness as I could muster.  No changes at this point.  But, ahem.)

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Progress continues on both the revisions of book two and the first-drafting of book three.   In the original Paks books, I wrote parts of the second and third book in parallel almost.   Here I’m finding revising two while writing three to be just as useful–since the things are So Darned Long, working on the previous one helps with continuity.   A lot.

So…what’s happening now?

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There’s a chapter in Book Two that is Not Right.   Now usually at this point in a project, I know if something isn’t right, and why it’s not right, and thus how to fix it and make it right.

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