The last “block” of Book III fell into place with the completion of the swordfight at, um, 2:15 am this morning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So between now and January 1,\u00a0 there are decisions to be made, and multiple rewrites\/cleanups to be done.\u00a0 More text may need to be added (transition cues, scenes that now,\u00a0 though not formerly, need enhancement.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 About 4-6 weeks of work is going to have to be accomplished in 10 days, two of which are Christmas Eve (when I have two church services to attend and one to sing in) and Christmas (when I won’t be working on the book–I’ll be sleeping and recovering from Christmas Eve.)\u00a0 Plus a necessary social thing on 12\/26 (annual party at close friend’s house given by her kids…not missing that.)\u00a0\u00a0 Hence, “writer as whirlwind.”<\/p>\n
The big decision about where this volume’s timeline ends was made in the scene written last night, by a death.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So you will find yourself in another “short” timeline, as with Oath<\/em>:\u00a0 going on past event X would require many tens of thousands of words more to bring all the timelines up to reasonably parity.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ending is a solid one–it does create an internal arc–and though I’m sure you’ll want to know “What next?” it’s not (in my mind) a cliffhanger like the one at the end of Divided Allegiance<\/em>.\u00a0 And I will start Book IV with some thousands of words in hand.\u00a0 Which is good.<\/p>\n This was a scene that took longer to write than you might expect.\u00a0 But it involved one conflict segueing into another…and then another…and then an all-out\u00a0 multi-character swordfight.\u00a0\u00a0 Every segment had to provide the solid ground for the next to spring from, be internally consistent for both the physical actions and the emotional shifts, and rise above the previous in terms of tension and impact.<\/p>\n If I did it right, you will forget that you know this technical stuff when you read it, and you will be yanked breathlessly from A to B to C…and through C, which is the longest…and then feel the impact of D.\u00a0 If I mess up anywhere along the line, you will flash back to this post and feel very superior to the poor writer…”Ah, I see what she’s doing here.\u00a0 She’s….”\u00a0 Which is not ideal on first reading.\u00a0 Third, maybe.<\/p>\n So…the first task of the day is to decide exactly how to\u00a0 lop off the parts that will be in Book IV.\u00a0\u00a0 Which ends can be left hanging loose and wiggling, and which should have at least temporary tie-ups?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When that’s done,\u00a0 then the serious (more serious) three-layer revision starts, as I’ve talked about before.<\/p>\n Writer as whirlwind is now spinning up to full velocity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The last “block” of Book III fell into place with the completion of the swordfight at, um, 2:15 am this morning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So between now and January 1,\u00a0 there are decisions to be made, and multiple rewrites\/cleanups to be done.\u00a0 More text may need to be added (transition cues, scenes that now,\u00a0 though not formerly, need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,52,45,5],"tags":[106,62,51,107],"class_list":["post-969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-editing","category-revisions","category-the-writing-life","tag-contents","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\/969"}],"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=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":971,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}