Chapter numbers.\u00a0\u00a0 Chapter numbers don’t go on until I’m sure all the chapters are there, in the right order (OK, MOSTLY sure.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Before that, chapters have a title, such as “Chapter: Kieri & Elves Talk History” (not actual title.)\u00a0 That way I can use a search on “Chapter” to find the beginnings of chapters, and the title tells me if I have the one I want.\u00a0 Chapter numbers change during the writing, as I may be off-chronology.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Chapters are numbered now, all forty-one of them.<\/p>\n
Other things:\u00a0\u00a0 Spellchecking.\u00a0\u00a0 Reading sections aloud, one chapter at a time (my voice wears out if I do too much at once) to catch typos spellcheck won’t and clumsy constructions.\u00a0\u00a0 (Note–if I fix something, it needs another read through at least 12 hours later to be sure I didn’t leave a fossil of the original.)\u00a0\u00a0 Continuity\/consistency checks.\u00a0\u00a0 Did someone pull out a sword from a scabbard, but clobber the attacker with a club?\u00a0 What happened to the sword?\u00a0 Where did the club come from?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Clarity:\u00a0 I know the story well, but what I know about why someone did something is no help to the reader if it’s not actually in the words of the story.<\/p>\n
And any fixes will require other fixes…as if the story were a mobile hanging by a thin wire from the reader’s mind.\u00a0\u00a0 Take off that fish and put on a bison, and the mobile tilts.\u00a0\u00a0 The bison won’t balance in place of the fish…so move the bison or add something else…which then tilts the mobile a different way.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not to mention that it’s really embarrassing when–after the thing is hung and apparently balancing, you notice the fish still on the table and know that the fish is essential to the design…and people start asking “But where’s the FISH?”<\/p>\n
Then comes the last rub with the polishing cloth, to remove (the writer hopes) the smudgy marks from all the messing about.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Editors will no doubt find more and point out where the writer should do more polishing.\u00a0 That’s their job.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But I prefer them to say “It’s really clean but there’s this bit here,” rather than “I’m sorry, but there’s a lot more to be done.”\u00a0 (Among other things, the writer doesn’t get paid until the ms. is accepted, and accepted means there’s not much if anything more to be done before it goes to copy-editing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And on my publishing schedule, I need to be working on the next\u00a0 book, not spending more time fixing this one.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chapter numbers.\u00a0\u00a0 Chapter numbers don’t go on until I’m sure all the chapters are there, in the right order (OK, MOSTLY sure.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Before that, chapters have a title, such as “Chapter: Kieri & Elves Talk History” (not actual title.)\u00a0 That way I can use a search on “Chapter” to find the beginnings of chapters, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,45,5],"tags":[62,51,107],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-revisions","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-revision","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1432,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions\/1432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}