Paksworld

Book III is no longer Book III, or the tentative title I sent it in with.   Editor (who is a genius, if anyone asks)  agreed that the tentative title wasn’t an obvious marketing winner, and suggested (ta-DAH)  Crisis of Vision.     And I immediately said (after the ritual headdesk maneuver for not thinking of it myself) Hurray, hurray, o frabjous day, a book is born, hurray, hurray.

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Saturday didn’t really count.   Today is the official Day One of Book IV, and Book bounded out of the starting gate and gave me its daily wordage in a little less than 3 hours.    The pace isn’t flat out gallop (boy, the first two paragraphs were!) because it’s a long race and it’s better not to push too hard too soon.  Read the rest of this entry »

“You killed her!”

Yeah, that’s right,  I have no self-control, and now Book IV has a first paragraph.   It may not be the real first paragraph (the actual start of   Book III isn’t what I first wrote) but you have to admit it’s attention-getting (and I wrote it early this morning before the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords…hours before that happened.  Now it looks…too related. )

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Now that III is with Editor and Agent,  and I have recovered some of the lost sleep,  I can start thinking about the ground that Book IV needs to cover, as well as start deciding what to do with discarded bits of III.   Some will make side stories, as they occur far too early in III to be continued into IV.    Some–occurring temporally after the end of III, definitely need to be in IV.

Although I planned to take the whole week off to rest up, other stuff got in the way.   Epiphany, for instance: for those of us who are active in one of the liturgically traditional churches, there’s a second calendar to deal with.  Epiphany isn’t just a word; it’s a feast day, with a service to sing for (if you’re in the choir) and necessarily a rehearsal before that.   But not just Epiphany–other things required writer-business attention, and one still does.  A trip to the bank to get my French tax forms certified.

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Early in the morning, at the break of day, the writer pushed a button, and sent the book away.   Away, away, away my lads, she sent the book away,  all on a tide of ‘lectrons, she sent it far away.    Still early in the morning, but not the break of day,  the Editor did see it, as on her desk it lay.   It lay, it lay, it lay, my lads,  upon her desk it lay, just where the writer sent it, so far, far away.

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Many wise things have been said about putting the same effort into the last part of a task as in the first 90 (or sometimes 99) percent.    To which I can only say “Yeah.  That.”     No book is ever perfect, but the closer the writer comes, the better the reader’s experience.

Yet at some point, the writer must stop…stop writing, stop revising (at least for awhile) and send the book to its Editor, and at some point the Editor must stop…stop asking for more revision, more changes, and then the book goes out in the world as groomed at they both can make it, but both understanding that somewhere something will have been missed.

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