As I sit here bleary-eyed after midnight yet again…I’m issuing a warning to anyone contemplating facing the same situation.\u00a0 Do Not Try This At Home.\u00a0 Yeah, eventually, every writer is in this spot, but it’s often (not always!) avoidable and avoidance has many benefits.<\/p>\n
Such as a full night’s sleep at least every other night.<\/p>\n
What’s been accomplished?\u00a0 Well…another round with the sheepsfoot roller (a thing they used to use on highways before paving–maybe they do still–to compact and smooth the surface) on the first four hundred pages (deemed OK until after rollering, which always brings up a surprise or eight.)\u00a0\u00a0 A sequential bottom-to-top workover of pages 400 – 550-something (I’ve already closed the file.)\u00a0\u00a0 600-800 have already had that done and been combed repeatedly, as have the last x-many pages (it varies, as work along the way shrinks & swells the whole.)<\/p>\n
This work has included rewriting all the repetitious bits found in that section, with the emphasis shifted from “what happened” to “how X reacted to what X thinks happened.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The longest re-write was this evening (naturally–the things that are going to keep me up after midnight to make something all-of-a-piece do not land on my plate in the morning…no, they land on my plate past 8 or 9 pm.)\u00a0 Good new material got added–I’m very pleased with it–but my eyes are still burning from last night and it’s almost 1 am.\u00a0\u00a0 Renamed a duke (ditto about the burning eyes.)\u00a0\u00a0 Figured out a really neat connection between Umph and Ehrrr that improves the next 200something pages (ditto about the burning eyes.)<\/p>\n
OTOH,\u00a0 there’s no doubt at all that I will have this finished…oh, wait.\u00a0 No title yet.\u00a0 Um.\u00a0 Well, this volume’s actual story content will be finished and off to Editor on time.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At this point, even if the crazed time-traveling ninja leapt through the window and beheaded me…the story’s so close Editor could tidy up the things I’ll tidy up tomorrow and on the weekend.\u00a0\u00a0 Multiple copies of the current version–up to the minute–are on external media.\u00a0\u00a0 One never says “Nothing can go wrong now” but…precautions have been taken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I sit here bleary-eyed after midnight yet again…I’m issuing a warning to anyone contemplating facing the same situation.\u00a0 Do Not Try This At Home.\u00a0 Yeah, eventually, every writer is in this spot, but it’s often (not always!) avoidable and avoidance has many benefits. Such as a full night’s sleep at least every other night.<\/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-982","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\/982"}],"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=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":985,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}