The sun is shining but there's a bitter wind. I am trying to make hay and it's not easy.
For the first time since October, or thenabouts, I have no commercial editing on my plate. Another week and I'll start to worry – who have I offended this time? – but for now I'm enjoying the peace. No deadlines, no pressure to work on anything but my own work. Actually, that's not quite true; I have submissions to file before any given agent closes up their window (next one on the 31st).
But for the most part I am getting on with Our Kind of Bastard, and generally not having too horrible a time. This is my last pass before it goes out to two particular beta-readers and, despite the anxiety of knowing it'll go out to critical maws, I am enjoying the opportunity to give the rough a good buffing.
I'm about half-way through the manuscript now, and it's not (yet) too appalling. As I've said before, the first quarter has been covered several times in abortive passes, my edits abandoned due to having to leap to other jobs. So things should get worse before they get better.
Here's to optimism.
So far I have added one scene and heavily rewritten another. That's about the limits of my substantive changes; mostly otherwise I am doing my usual tinkering at the edges, tidying up poor word-choice or unnecessary descriptors. I've also found a surprising number of typos – surprising because I consider myself a fairly clean writer, and because none of my last-round betas – I now have two 'waves' of critics, and, frankly, the more the merrier – reported anything concerning.
But then, one thing I learnt from self-publishing New Gods was to not trust myself regarding typos and similar mistakes. Next time – and I emphasise that errors are now fixed and New Gods remains an excellent novel that, have you not already, you should rush out and buy – I will get an external pair of eyes to do the necessary, even if that means spending money.
Back to OKoB. I think this is the longest I've been between drafts, and, I must say, I think there's a good chance of keeping this out of 'problem child' territory – though I remain convinced that my betas will find substantive problems that will require proper thinking to resolve.
Not too fond of thinking. Far too much like hard work.
In any case, I'm not at the end of this draft yet. There's the whole 'bad French' problem to eliminate, including – if memory serves – a whole scene writing (apart from stage directions) in French. I'm not sure what to do about this yet. Cutting the whole thing is an obvious way forwards, but the scene was there for a reason, if only for the building up of tension, and I'm not sure how much a gap it would leave. But in a scene between two French people, having a sudden inexplicable translation would be odd, n'est pas? Something has to give.
But we are moving onwards. Here's to progress! It's just a shame that this is caused by lack of work – and subsequent lack of money – and not a redesign for life.
Progress. Here's to it, and to making good use of the things that we find.
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