Paksworld

After some 22 hours on the train, I’m in St. Louis, in the hotel, and I have a lot of comments to work into the revisions.   So I won’t be online a lot, but progress will be made.    I’ll check in when there’s something new to say.

No one person can do it all, in the alpha-reading world, which is why having a group works best for me.  Each of you is sensitive to slightly different things.

Overnight, I got more helpful comments.   And I’m seeing my way clear to some changes in mid-book that will of course impact end-book when they’re done.

Spoilers (some serious spoilers) below the line, so don’t “read more” unless spoilers don’t bother you.

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(Aside–it’s really hard to talk about some of this without spoilers for those who hate spoilers…so if you avsolutely hate spoilers, you might want to skip what’s below…)

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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 realized I needed business cards for the upcoming trips, and having waited too long to order interesting ones in time, I bought software to make my own.  With my own graphics.

What a time sink!   What fun!    Three Paksworld-specific business card designs, two-sided, the back side with a list of the Paksworld books.   Unfortunately my favorite design, where the background was supposed to be the map for the new book turned sideways and ‘faded’ enough not to compete with the business card data, printed too pale, though the map showed up fine on screen.

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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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Because I’m stuck in page proofs of book one, with a deadline on it, and needing to prepare a presentation for another (and different) university gig, you won’t hear back from me about what you sent for some time.  Don’t worry about that.  The rain is also a factor.  My phone’s out completely and the other phone hisses.   At least the internet hasn’t died, but we’re due even more rain (it’s now over 7.5 inches in two days) and this has made some ordinary chores…time-consuming.

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.

Years ago when Baen decided to put out either the omnibus Deed or the hardcover, a proofreader found an error that had skated past all previous readings by me, other proofreaders, my alpha readers, and the editor.

All I remember about it is that it was a pronoun error of some kind.   It referred to the wrong person.  I think.  At any rate,  even when the proofreader commented on it, wondering if it was the wrong pronoun, at first I didn’t get it…but it was wrong, and needed to be changed, and none of  us who had missed it could quite believe we had.

Now the UK omnibus Deed is in production, and if any of you ever spotted it and stumbled over it and thought “Oh, I must be wrong”–and know where it is and can point it out–we have a chance to prevent its survival into another edition.   I can’t find it now.  I’m not even sure where in that monster it is, but I think either Divided Allegiance or Oath of Gold, because I think the pronoun reference is someone either talking about someone at Fin Panir or someone in Fin Panir talking about someone else at a distance.   I spent a little time looking for it but can’t find it.