I have had at least one good editing session since we last met, and Our Kind of Bastard is getting the rereading it deserves – cursory, and with plenty of skipping.
I jest. But, after agonising over the opening and with great swathes of the finale to rework, the section in between seems to run remarkably smoothly. Too smoothly, in fact, which leads me to the conclusion that I've probably not done a very good job in the critical evaluation.
But that's okay. This isn't the absolutely critical draft, it's merely me reminding myself of what happens after a long time away from the novel; finding the odd error; and of course purging much of the dodgy French that, to be honest, I'm not really encountering just yet. I mean, I can (and should) include the odd word here and there, non? It'd be weird to have an entire novel set in Brittany and have not even a scrap of French.
I have, however, just reached my most indulgent scene – one set most entirely in the aforementioned language. There's a reason for this (isn't there always?). It's a little interregnum in the flow; a break as we circle up to the main narrative and a different perspective presented, in this case that of one of my 'Gallic agents'. To have a Frenchman speaking English to another Frenchman would just be weird, right?
But it's got to go. Now my question is whether I can, or should, simply excise the scene, or whether I replace it with something along the same lines – a tension builder, a little break in narrative frenzy before I pile on to the climax – only resolutely in English.
Incidentally, I do wonder how languages are translated into the languages they're native of. In the unlikely event of my novel being translated into French, how would the publisher handle the bits of French that do survive? I've no idea. Fortunately it's not the sort of thing I actually have to worry about.
Anyhoo, as I said, it's just these few scenes and then I'm on to the climax. I am, as I have said before, a long climaxer so there's still plenty of time for it to all go wrong.
And then it's the denouement (of which I can remember practically nothing) and then then then it's off to my two final readers who will tell me what works and what doesn't. And this time I think I'm more afeared of the response than I have been for some drafts/projects. For why? I'm not exactly sure. Because I'm lazy and I fear work, I guess.
I guess I just have a nagging suspicion that there's actually quite a lot of work that needs doing on OKoB. I mean, I've not found that much in my readthrough, but that just makes me more nervous. There's older feedback I've never particularly engaged with. Will my laziness shine through to the proverbial outsider? And will I have the gumption to actually act on this round of criticism?
This is where I want a professional editor – preferably someone who's paying me to publish and not the other way round – to get involved. It's not that I don't trust my betas – I do, absolutely – but… Sometimes they give contradictory advice and it's difficult to know how much weight to give them. If someone's paying me to do it and my future is dependent on getting a specific well-defined job done then I'm in there, yessiree.
Anyway, these are all musings for another day. In the meantime I continue: to edit, to get rejected, to pick myself up and get rejected again.
Slowly I am working my way to having a (second) quality trilogy, even if no-one actually wants it.]
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