Paksworld

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.

The new new book has of course run into problems.  They all do this, so no need to panic (I tell myself at five minute intervals while reading it and thinking “this is the worst thing I’ve ever written in my entire life, including ‘My Dog Tippy’ that I wrote at age six…)    Even though it isn’t finished, I started braiding it, to see how much of the whole is taken up by each person’s POV (balance is necessary)  and suddenly I hate it.   The beginning, in particular,  is a disaster…and that’s not imagination because it was (I’m redoing it) pages of vital stuff told in the least interesting way possible.   Talky, talky, talky exposition.   This, this, and this was done, then that was done, then another thing…nobody deserving of being a main charater muses that long about events of the past quarter year, and even if they did, you don’t want to read it.    Especially not at the start of the book.    Ick, argh, what was I *thinking* that I ever put those sentences down???   Apparently, not thinking at all.   Hence a new first chapter is in work, with a different POV character who is actually doing something at the moment.

My original hope that the rough main draft of the new book could be finished by mid-June is now shot full of holes….it’s going to need a ton of work to become a coherent draft, let along a version I can show my editor.   I was re-reading a bit of Surrender None last night (having had it out to look at its map) and fell right into the story in a way that the new new book just isn’t doing for me.

OTOH, I am liking Oath of Fealty better, reading it in whole again.   Some parts made me cry, and some made me laugh out loud–and I’m not an easy audience for my own work.  I’m much more likely to see the clumsy bits and the “Why didn’t I use another word?” things instead of being swept away.    So that’s good.

I was hoping to finish the work on the Track Changes version before bedtime tonight, but goofed off to watch Mystery on PBS because I’ve read one Wallender book and could watch Kenneth Branagh’s face by the hour anyway.  So that will be tomorrow, and then the map and then…