{"id":1910,"date":"2013-08-06T23:32:37","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T05:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1910"},"modified":"2013-08-06T23:32:37","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T05:32:37","slug":"crown-molding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1910","title":{"rendered":"Crown Molding"},"content":{"rendered":"

A terrible pun, true.\u00a0\u00a0 But also true that revisions consist of more than pulling out the Chainsaw of Correction.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes revision means noticing that the arm of the statue is on at the wrong angle…and remodeling, molding it, until it looks right.\u00a0 Both Agent and Editor found things to say about Crown of Renewal<\/em> that pointed to the need for more remolding than chainsawing and clipping (though those did occur.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From the writer’s point of view, a number of characters began this series in apparently stable–but actually very unstable–positions.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Settled characters–people who, in midlife, thought they had everything tied down snugly and they knew what they’d be doing to the end of their lives–were in fact about to undergo unexpected and difficult changes.\u00a0 Even the ones that appeared advantageous, with a jump in status and wealth, came with problems.\u00a0 Or, as one of my riding books preferred to put it, challenges.<\/p>\n

So through the series,\u00a0 these people and others have had their ups and downs, have coped well or not with what happened to them, and they arrived at the start of Crown<\/em> with new understandings of themselves and the changes going on around them.\u00a0 But not complete understanding of either, and still capable of being knocked sideways by the unexpected.\u00a0 (In some cases, they could not have expected; in some cases they might have caught on if they’d been paying attention in the right direction.\u00a0 But life doesn’t give any of us all the time, health, wealth, etc. needed to spot everything coming from all directions.)<\/p>\n

Tiptoeing around major spoiler blocks, I can say that revision has filled out some sketchy things, made clear what are the big psychological gaps still remaining,\u00a0 and (I hope) has sharpened understanding of characters so that no one will be saying “X was too easy.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes the difficulty is physical, sometimes technical\/knowledge, and sometimes it’s psychological–relating to that character’s deep history and\/or innate nature.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The book has…um…grown.\u00a0 More stuff had to go in and a lot of stuff had to be moved over to allow the new stuff to go in, and then a lot of smoothing\/molding\/finishing had to be done to make it all look right.<\/p>\n

Many of the questions asked will be answered definitively and finally.\u00a0 Some…will not.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not definitively, or not finally, or neither.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One little bit I can tell you about.<\/p>\n

Like most cultures, these have festivals.\u00a0 Some are very old, and relate most often to the seasons.\u00a0 Some are a mere 500 years old, and relate to what happened back then…such as the Girdish war for independence from the magelords.\u00a0\u00a0 Not immediately (because Gird wasn’t into that sort of thing) but not too long after his death, a festival commemorating the great victory at Greenfields, including a re-enactment of the battle, got started and has continued.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But it’s not at Greenfields…which isn’t in a heavily populated area even now. \u00a0 If you want a big festival with people coming in from all over the realm…you need supports in place: food, water, etc. etc. etc.\u00a0\u00a0 So instead of commemorating the Battle of Greenfields at Greenfields….it’s at the site of a battle Gird lost.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>That has the advantage (besides tickling the funnybones of those with a sense of irony) of yearly canceling out the memory of that battle, and replacing it with the memory of victory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It has the disadvantage of any large festival, in that crowds are easily diverted into mischief.<\/p>\n

Let’s see…what else?\u00a0\u00a0 Well…there are ships, and stuff happening at sea.\u00a0\u00a0 I said that already, but there’s more than one “stuff happening at sea” to deal with.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s a tragedy involving a villain.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are at least three very interesting horses.\u00a0 Horse nomads show up.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We find out more about the internal life of a gnome tribe in its stoneright, though not enough.\u00a0\u00a0 Gnomish females are very<\/em> secretive, including with their writer.\u00a0\u00a0 Saying “Come on, I’m female too, and I’m you’re writer…don’t hide, come chat with me.\u00a0 What’s it like being gnomish and pregnant?” did not get me anywhere.\u00a0 Beady black eyes and the disappearance of female gnomes into the depths of the cave.\u00a0 I do know they actually eat that stuff they grow in those caves.<\/p>\n

Not me: I once ate a cookie at my grandmother’s house–took it out of the jar in the kitchen late one night without turning on the light–and when I got back to the bedroom where I was sitting up late reading,\u00a0 the cookie was furred with\u00a0 with blue mold.\u00a0\u00a0 (Yes, I ate the other half of it.\u00a0 It was too late to quit then, wasn’t it?)\u00a0\u00a0 I know what that mold tasted like (dust, if you’re interested.\u00a0 Slightly sour dust) and misiljit<\/em> looks too much like that mold, though it’s not the same thing at all.\u00a0 It’s thicker and moister.\u00a0 This does not improve its eye-appeal for me.\u00a0\u00a0 But you will find out how the gnomes make their cloth for all those gray uniforms and the reason for the carved screen Selfer saw when he visited the Aldonfulk prince.<\/p>\n

I know some things about that horse nomad tribe, too, but that’s for another book–they appear in this one only once.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A terrible pun, true.\u00a0\u00a0 But also true that revisions consist of more than pulling out the Chainsaw of Correction.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes revision means noticing that the arm of the statue is on at the wrong angle…and remodeling, molding it, until it looks right.\u00a0 Both Agent and Editor found things to say about Crown of Renewal that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,100,5],"tags":[108,106,107],"class_list":["post-1910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contents","category-crown-of-renewal","category-the-writing-life","tag-background","tag-contents","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910"}],"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=1910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1911,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions\/1911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}