Paksworld

When I did the chapter-by-chapter summary of Book 2, in order to produce a one-paragraph summary for Editor, I discovered that chapter 15 was missing.  Completely.  As if someone had cut it out.   I had a vague memory of what was in it, but it wasn’t there.  That suggested that I’d revised it separately at some point and then cut the old and failed to past in the new.  But…where was the new?   Had I lost it somewhere?  And with the mass of Book 2, how could I possible stick back in the missing chapter, even if I found it?

Well…I found the missing chapter 15, masquerading under another title, in the Book 3 folder, while going back to work on Book 3.   I don’t know how that happened.  I must have been very, very tired at the time.    So I looked at it, to see if it could be shortened to fit into Book 2 without making that one another 5000 words fatter, and realized…there was a better solution.

But it was again late at night, not a time when my brain is at its best calculating probabilities.   Still…it seemed worth trying out.   So I put a line of dashes along the bottom of the chapter as it was, and started in on a trial section…close to half a year  later in story-time than the original, skipping over a lot of interesting but maybe not plot-vital detail, and landing Arvid Semminson in another frying pan.

Sophisticated people who think they’re smarter than everyone else can sometimes fail to account for how less-sophisticated and smarter people think.  Which can be, if not fatal, at least dangerous.

I’d still rather have all the stuff in the original chapter 15, plus what happened between then and where the new stuff starts, but I think the new stuff will connect well enough in readers’ minds while not bulking up the books.

Meanwhile, I’m finishing up the annual wildlife management report I have to file by January 31, and about to start an essay for an exhibition catalog for Texas A&M University’s celebration of its science fiction collection in March (the essay’s deadline is the first week of February.)