Paksworld

Today was spent mostly working on the essay for the exhibition catalog, but also, for recreation, a bit more work on Book 3.    I am learning more about the Thieves’ Guild than I ever expected to and it turns out to resemble (though different in goals)  other human organizations of like size.   You have your steady, stable, hardworking members, and your crackpots, and your enthusiasts, and your explosive personalities…it’s more like what you read about the Mafia than the rather disorganized souls who fill the cells of the county jail. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you ever wanted to see a writer doing the Dance of Nerves…well, no, it’s not on YouTube, and won’t be, but I remember thinking it would be forever until the new book came out (and some of you thought the same thing) and here it is…almost.   For me, part of what made it seem so long was not having a book out in 2009.    Read the rest of this entry »

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?  Read the rest of this entry »

Where you have recruits, you have problems.   Some problems seem to be endemic to just about every military organization, though I suspect that some paramilitary organizations full of fervent Believers (any kind–fervent Believers are more alike than distinguished by the content of their beliefs) may avoid some of them. Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday was mostly consumed with trying to compress all of book 2 into a paragraph.  I got it down to two paragraphs.  I’m sure Editor will do better.

Today, though, was a good writing day.  Family was gone in the morning and another plot-bomb exploded, seeding my mind with shards of ideas, all smoking hot (or so it seemed.)  2768 words before I left for the city with M-, and I ended the day with a total of 3173.   Moreover, these are not just words tossed in to raise the count–these are writing-as-fast-as-I-can-to-keep-up words.  Read the rest of this entry »

Book three just dropped a plot bomb on me.   And boy, is it going to have repercussions if it turns out to be a real one.

And no, I can’t tell you anything about it.

Lyonya.  The rest should be obvious.    This is early in Book Three but should not contain any terrible spoilers other than the king is fighting, which you probably suspected would happen at some point

.  Obviously, first draft.

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Kieri shifted his weight; Banner shortened into collection and half-pass in counter-canter, bringing Kieri directly to one of those in mid-change.  Kieri’s sword-stroke took the creature across the middle, splitting a still-soft carapace.  On the backswing he took the second.  Even as he looked back, Banner snorted and changed leads, swinging his hindquarters around.

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For the alpha readers…a comment below the cut.  For the rest of you, spoiler below the cut.

I’m still 2000 words over my own self-imposed limit–2206, to be precise–but almost-nearly-everything is done.  The giant awful chapter has been neatly split up into logical chapter-like units (it’s not just the size, it’s the structural integrity) and looking at one comment of Agent’s….no, there’s a reason someone expresses sadness at someone else’s death repeatedly.    It would be unrealistic for that character not to be reminded and have it cross his awareness.  Editor will have to weigh in for me to change it. Read the rest of this entry »

Been at this all morning and of course found something that needed massive amounts of work.   Had to print out another 40-something pages, to check for repeated points in multiple conversations…the sort of thing that real people do, but that (so I’ve been told for year) annoys readers no end.   “He said that already!”   (As if we didn’t all say the same things over and over…but fiction isn’t reality, and this is one of the ways.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Progress indeed, despite another attack of headache in the afternoon–not only some smoothing, but about 4000 words of the necessary cuts (admittedly, part of  that was finding a fossil duplicate chapter hiding out two chapters away from where it belonged…how did it sneak over there??)    Read the rest of this entry »