Quite often, and especially with long books,\u00a0 writers are up against tight deadlines.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, we proofread.\u00a0 Yes, we try to find every continuity error, every awkward phrase, every less than perfect word choice.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And we hope Editor and Copy-Editor and eventually the proofreader for the page proofs will find the ones we miss (though sometimes we need to correct their corrections.\u00a0\u00a0 The CE who wanted me to have a ship’s weapons “staffed” instead of “manned,” for instance.)\u00a0 But once a writer is hooked into a traditional publishing workflow,\u00a0 there’s a limit to how many drafts, how many re-readings, how much polishing can be done in the time alloted.<\/p>\n
Short fiction that’s under contract has a similar, but not identical, problem–the very fact that it’s short means it takes less time to re-read, to consider–in re-reading–whether maybe that final clause in the sentence should be the first…or maybe a separate sentence.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Still, if you suddenly realize that you’ve reversed characters’ roles…there may not be time to re-write it.\u00a0\u00a0 Magazine and anthology editors have hard deadlines because they need them–production deadlnes are bearing down on them–and stuff has to be ready when it’s due.<\/p>\n
What I’m rediscovering, working on the Paksworld stories,\u00a0 is the luxury of having time to read one, make notes, put it aside while reading another one–let days pass between re-readings–discuss it with my alpha readers for this project, fiddle with alternate versions.\u00a0\u00a0 Those that first appeared as log posts,\u00a0 though I tried to have them “clean,”\u00a0 were not really polished.\u00a0 Each re-reading, by me or the alpha readers,\u00a0 finds something–a roughness, a slight confusion, a redundancy, something–to be pulled out with mental forceps and replaced by something better.<\/p>\n
There’s pressure–from myself, mostly–to get this done quickly, but there’s no outside deadline,\u00a0 so there’s time to consider the story more fully, in its entire context.\u00a0\u00a0 Someone in a family you know is promoted.\u00a0\u00a0 Casually, writing that story the first time, I said the person was a second son.\u00a0\u00a0 Well, but…is he?\u00a0\u00a0 And how old would he be?\u00a0\u00a0 And what did he do before being promoted?\u00a0\u00a0 How many other sons are there–and daughters–and what are they like?\u00a0\u00a0 Because although this is a short story, and the others will not appear in it, they had an effect on him.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Is he just a generic second son or…something else?<\/p>\n
The second draft (or third; I lose track) of “Torre’s Ride”\u00a0 had a “storyteller” ending but did not work for the alpha readers, who were “Yeah, yeah, but the story ended back there, we don’t care that there were different versions, we just want one, right here.”\u00a0\u00a0 There was a…discussion.\u00a0 Civilized, of course.\u00a0\u00a0 I came around and now there is a version, just one, in this collection.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Best of all,\u00a0 in picking through the alternatives I’ve “heard” here and there in the murmurs of gossip in the Paksworld domain of my imagination, I found a really nifty one to use.\u00a0\u00a0 And working on that one yesterday,\u00a0 I realized a connection I hadn’t caught before between that story and Crown<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 I love the way my Paksworld deep logic connects things I haven’t consciously thought of yet.<\/p>\n Because short fiction is so short,\u00a0 it doesn’t develop the same momentum as big fat volumes of a big fat group.\u00a0\u00a0 And that’s why the fiddly bits matter so much.\u00a0 In the midst of a group, one lackluster word choice may (doesn’t always) go unnoticed…in a story, it’s like a specialty store sandwich with one of its bread slices being thin, flabby white “big chain” bread.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, every word choice should be perfect in a book, and in a series…but the story’s own momentum will carry readers over a few that aren’t.\u00a0 In a short story…not so much.\u00a0\u00a0 Hence the time I spent deciding whether the bad king in “Torre’s Ride” was wicked, evil, or cruel.\u00a0\u00a0 Any would work.\u00a0 But the piece is so short that varying them reads wrong–it reads like “I’m trying very hard not to repeat a word….”\u00a0 and it sticks out.\u00a0 Which, then?\u00a0\u00a0 (You’ll find out.)<\/p>\n “Vardan’s Tale,” which you had as a “Twelve Days of Christmas” treat,\u00a0 needed work, too.\u00a0\u00a0 There were fossil pronouns (wrong gender) in places–five, I think–and hastily written sentences that needed to have the burs combed out of their manes and their hooves cleaned, which often meant rearranging them, dividing them, and so on.<\/p>\n And bit by bit, they’re getting shinier, even glittery in places.\u00a0\u00a0 At least I think so, and faulty as a writer’s view of his\/her own writing often is,\u00a0 I think the mprovement is real.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Quite often, and especially with long books,\u00a0 writers are up against tight deadlines.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, we proofread.\u00a0 Yes, we try to find every continuity error, every awkward phrase, every less than perfect word choice.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And we hope Editor and Copy-Editor and eventually the proofreader for the page proofs will find the ones we miss (though sometimes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,61,5],"tags":[62,107],"class_list":["post-2193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collections","category-craft","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193"}],"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=2193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2195,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions\/2195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}