Paksworld

Losing something you’ve written is the #1 Writerly Woe–in this case a post I wrote a few hours ago, hit a wrong key, and lost…Boom! It had been a witty (I thought), entertaining (I hoped) post about another Writerly Woe that occurred today.  Lovingly crafted to bring you the utmost in amusement  and maybe a little insight into writer psychology.  Read the rest of this entry »

Early in a book project,  research is a major part of the work.   No matter what kind of book you’re writing, you’ll need to do some research, if only to find out (for instance) which way the one-way streets went in a given city in 1965 (or something similar.)   Because among the community of readers, there’s always the expert who knows, and will be glad to tell the world, if you made a mistake.   If your own desire to write perfect books ever flags, you know there’s this person, ready to purse their lips and write a scathing comment about your carelessness where it will do you the most harm.  (Nicer people pursing their lips just write you, which still stings but at least allows you your dignity.)

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About three days ago,  one of those ideas hit me that could be really good, sort of interesting, or not at all the right move.    It’s very spoiler-full, so here’s your first spoiler warning…if you don’t like spoilers, skip this post.

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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.

Apologies, to start with…I could not bear to see the cover image slide down out of sight…hence the lack of posts for a week.

But I haven’t been idle in that time.   No, the copy edits aren’t here yet, but some structural problems in book two…aren’t here still.   They’re fixed.   Here’s what happened.

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First: Happy Canada Day to you Canadians.

Second:   This may make you laugh.  It did me.   Critical scene–critical in terms of reader spatial orientation as well as reader “what’s happening” orientation.

And I got both direction (east v. west) and possibility wrong.   It was a plot bomb, and I was writing as fast as I could, but still!  East is east and west is west and if you go the wrong way you end up in the wrong place.   And one little three-letter word (“not”)  makes a huge difference.

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This morning I was goofing off by starting book three,  which meant I needed to check a few things from one and two.

It’s a fairly minor plot point (so far) so I don’t think it’s hugely spoilerish to reveal a little.    Some of Our Folks are in Aarenis, on a contract with Cortes Vonja to deal with brigands.  Standard, ordinary, until they find some swords.  One of the swords is a  Halveric sword, which is odd because the Halverics were careful to recover the arms of their wounded and dead.

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I was trotting briskly along yesterday,  with Book indicating it meant to break to a canter any moment now.  The moment came,  action took off…and then, at an about-to-be-really-exciting moment, it bucked off the writer and disappeared.

It then offered a competing scenario, with a different and equally interesting possibility, and disappeared again.

So, I said to it, which path is the real one?   Book chuckled evilly and refused to answer.

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Long, long ago, when I was writing the proposal for the current group of books, I wrote a nice long chunk that I thought would be likely to stay in the book all the way to the end.  I didn’t really think it would be chapter one, but in the book as then envisioned, it would have been close up in volume one.

As volume one did its rapid expansion last year, complete with the final burst of plot-bombs, this long chunk slid into book two.   Surely it would be the first chapter of book two, I thought.  As book two has done its own rapid expansion, that chunk slid toward the middle of the book, where it lodged in Book’s throat.  Periodically, in the course of adding newstuff, I’d re-read it and think “Needs a little touching up now, but I’ll catch it in second draft.”

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The ideas continued into the evening (naturally, because I have house guests arriving.    Probably in less than two hours, now, and I’m still glued to the book.)

ANYway.   I’ve had to start re-writing because there are tricky things to convey.    This shouldn’t be too spoilerish, but if you’re highly concerned about spoilers, you might want to turn away.

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