Dithering more strongly

Well ... I took Kedger out.
Now I've put him back in again.

Because I really missed him.


So.

Words completed in the rough draft

40,675 / 120,000 (33.9%)

Days used before rough draft should be finished

56 / 123 (45.5%)

Still not keeping up ...





The difference between writing now and writing in Jane Austen's era is that quill pens never decide to stop printing closed brackets and quill pens never get wonky about 'P's and only hit them two times out of three and quill pens don't collect cookie crumbs under the keys and cat hairs all across the screen and quill pens don't suddenly decide to start writing all in capitals.
On the other hand you don't have to catch a goose before you boot up your computer.

The Chicago Manual of Style -- Still ranting

Still ranting even though I'm done with the copyedits.

Shall I tell you what annoys me about Chicago Manual of Style?

– Words ending in 's' are made possessive by adding another 's'. The Jones's anachronism. Jesus's sake. Gus's furtive plaint. The ladies's favorite carol.

– Shades of color cannot be described in hyphened words. No blue-green sea monsters, red-orange incendiaries, purple-black bruises. You can call the frock an Alice-blue dress or a mustard-colored dress, but it's gotta be a blue green dress or a red and yellow striped dress.

– Adverbs modifying adjectives are not hyphened. No tightly-knit plots, only tightly knit plots. No determinedly-unpleasant villains, only determinedly unpleasant villains.

– You can cap organizations, but not titles. The Ladies Gardening Club is capped. The dowager empress of China is not.


These are not good choices. They do not contribute to clarity. They are ugly and clunky decisions. Yuck.

Day 34 of 123

I'm in Day 34 of the 123 days I had to finish the manuscript of Jess after ... well after whenever it was I decided I really had to enter the final stretch.

The good news is I'm finally past the breakfast table in Chapter Seven.
It's in final draft.
That was a really hard scene.

I'm not sure I have it right even now.

I just know that I've got past it and I'm still alive and I will hope the reader doesn't die of bordeom over the crumpets and tea.


The bad news is I'm way behind in my word count if I expect to get this done by October 1.

The good news is that I have a fairly easy stretch to get through next, which should generate lots of happy words.

22,019 / 120,000 (18.3%)

JESSAMYN word count on rough draft

34 / 123 (27.6%)

Days till deadline


(edited to add --- When this was happening, I kept track of the process day by day. A year later, I went back and pulled all that dullness out. You don't have to go through every inch of the plod and niggle. Lucky you.)

Copyedits reviewed and sent off

I have met pure evil. It is named the Chicago Manual of Style.

Chicago doesn't let me capitalize titles, like
Chief Officer
and Head of Section
and Director for Overseas Operations.
(The chief officer, head of section and director for overseas operations got together and bought a hatchet to chop the Chicago Manual of Style into tiny, writhing bits.)

Chicago doesn't let me put a hyphen in gray-green or blue-black or red-and-white striped.

Chicago puts double quotes around stuff I want to emphasize in a sentence so it looks like "this" instead of 'this'.

Jeesh.


The Chicago Manual of Style is undiluted malice, unmitigated chaos, unrelieved confusion and stupid, stupid, stupid.
Forget global warming. What we need to fight is the Chicago Manual of Style.

In other news, I have completed the check on the copyedits and returned the marked-up manuscript to New York.
My soul is scarred with little, bitty, comma-shaped shrapnel.
But I will recover.
Someday, I will write again.


All that said, I was given wise and lovely copyedits for which I am grovellingly grateful,
(even if they did use the Chicago Manual of Style.)

Turns out I sent Grey to both Harrow and Eton. (Clever boy. Or possibly incorrigible boy.)
I had a dress change magically from green to blue.
I wrecked havoc. (palm forehead. I know better.)
And something struck like lightening.
(My fingers make this mistake. Generally I go back and catch it. Cripes. Make yourself look like a fool, jo. )

Thank you, master copyeditor, wherever you are.

I had to change my transAtlantic mishmash of spelling to straight American spelling, which is understandable, I suppose.
Sometimes I get puzzled. Why would American writers transmute vivid, traditional, instantly-comprehensible 'blood-red', into 'bloodred'?
What an ugly word. It looks like the past tense of 'to blodder'.

21,000 / 120,000 (17.5%)

Wordwount of Jessamyn

31 / 123 (25.2%)

Days to deadline

Cover

Copy Edits

I think I just got the copy edits of Spymaster's Lady.

It's a big white overnight package, anyway.

(Jo feels it and shakes it, wondering.)

Technical Topic -- Pacing

When I write
I don't think so much in terms of 'pacing' as of 'forward momentum'.

Yes, you need to vary the pacing.
Some scenes run just dead fast,
some jog along, intense and steady,
some go contemplative and slow.

Some stuff works better when it's done slowly -- complex emotional development.
Some stuff works better when it's done fast -- fight scenes. Conflict of many kinds.

But more important than the scene moving 'fast' or 'slow' is whether the ongoing narrative drags the reader along.

It is when the reader is not entrapped by the narrative that she stops and says ... 'this is too slow'.
and she doesn't generally mean the pacing should be speeded up.
The pacing can be hectic.
She often means her attention is not beeing pulled along fast enough.

And the writer hears the 'this is too slow' and says ... "I have to speed up the pacing,'
and turns the speed up another notch
and makes more stuff happen.

Look at Hitchcock.
He varies fast- and slow-paced scenes to great effect ... uses a gradual increase in pace to build tension.
And yet, his movies are full of slow-paced scenes
you can't look away from.

Technical Topics -- Synopsis

Couple of thoughts on a synopsis.


A synopsis is you sitting down and telling the story to a friend.
That's the kind of organization and straightforwardness you're aiming for.
If you can, sound like yourself, that's a plus.

This belongs in a synopsis --

Who is the story about?
What kind of person is he?
What problem faced him, or what was at stake?
Why was it important?
What did he do about it?



-- Write they synopsis in present tense.
-- Almost always, give the action chronologically.
-- Follow the story of the protagonist or protagonists ...
-- Don't try to tell everything that happened.
-- Ignore the stories of all the other characters insofar as you can.
-- Do not give plot detail. Give plot essence.
-- Do not keep any secrets or raise any questions you do not answer.
-- Describe minor characters as 'Jim's mother' or 'the Evil Overlord', rather than 'Charlene' or 'Mycroft'.
-- Describe motivation and character of your players, not appearance.
-- No backstory.
-- No descriptiion. No worldbuilding. No explaining.
-- If the story and the synopsis still makes sense after you remove a paragraph or a sentence, remove the paragraph or the sentence.



The agent comes to the synopsis wondering whether you are capable of constructing a story with a beginning, development, and resolution ...
and whether you can create a main character with human motivation who makes believable decisions which result in realistic consequences.

So that's what you want to put into the synopsis.
beginning, development, resolution, motivation, decisions, consequences.

Technical Topics -- Openings

ADVICE THE FIRST -- WRITE THE BEGINNING LAST

Or at least, do the agonizing perfect polish of those first three chapters,
last.

I'm paraphrasing somebody else here ...
can't remeber who just at the moment.

One problem with story openings is that they are technically difficult,
and we write them just when we are least prepared to do so.

We write the opening before we know our characters well,
before we have negotiated the conflicts of Chapters 13 and 22,
before all the 'aha moments' Chapter 8 and Chapter 11.

One way to solve the 'opening problem'
is to sketch out the opening,
finish the ms,
and return to lock down those first three chapters,
last.


ADVICE THE SECOND -- DON'T BE AN AMATEUR

There are some openings
that an agent picks it up and just groans.
Because many many amateur mss start this way.

AAAARRRRGGGGH goes the agent.
You do not want to do this to the nice agent, do you?

Do you want to know what amateur openings look like?

Go thou out to the web and find display sites.
Google -- "writers" "post" "your" "manuscript" "showcase"

Read fifty or a hundred of the offerings.
You only have to read to the point where you know this story sucks.
Look at why you know this story sucks
and don't do that


ADVICE THE THIRD -- SOME STUFF TO PUT IN CHAPTER ONE

Your story has a couple Main Characters. (1)

Your story has something that makes life just hell for an MC. Something that wants to let the air out of his tires and steal his underwear and bite his liver out and chew it up into little pieces and spit it out on the pavement. (2)

Your story also has something an MC would give his right arm up to the elbow for. (3)

Chapter One should contain (1) and either (2) or (3) or both.
It should contain those elements right from the start.

Not the beginning of the element or what will become the element. The element itself.


ADVICE THE FOURTH (AND FINAL) -- STRUCTURE

Do not put in a teaser for a few paragraphs
and then nip away somewhere else --
to yesterday or twenty years ago or Nome, Alaska.

Because wherever you nip to,
it is not as exciting as where you have just been
and the reader knows it.

When you start in a place and time,
with your MC and either (2) or (3) or both,
stay there
for the whole opening scene.


NON-ADVICE --
just an observation.

You can do any durned thing you please,
except bore the reader.
If you write well enough you can start Chapter One with the Vladiivostok telephone directory.
.
.

I may never get out of Chapter Three

I was sitting in Starbucks yesterday, with my eyes closed. I was inside Jess, feeling the blanket she's wearing – she's not wearing anything else; she leads an eventful existence – and every once in a while I'd open my eyes and be back in Starbucks.

When I was Jess, I didn't hear the background music. When I was in Starbucks, I did. A fine jazz sax.

We travel into our story ... not for revision, redrafting, correction or proofing. But the first time, the creating time, we make the journey all the way to our world.



In other news, got the contract for Spymaster's Lady to sign.
Gee.
Thick little thing, isn't it?

Still in Three

I'm doing about the fifth draft of the last half of Chapter Three of JESS.
This is probably the final draft.
But then, I've thought that a couple of times before.

Why I'm doing this ...

When I shortened Chapter One to about half of its former glory
and chucked the prologue overboard, (Remember splash?)

I tossed out lots of Jess POV. The balance has shiftered too far away from her.
I need more Jess POV.
Which -- since I'm covering the same territory -- means less Sebastian POV.

I have beautiful passages in that Sebastian POV. I have clever, insightful, incisive, funny work in Sebastian POV.
(splash)

I have to go back and write the scene from Jess' POV.

I can do that. Yes.
But it's hard to write when you're pouting about stuff you had to throw out.

First Three of Jess

Just about through the final draft of the first three chapters of JESS. It is surprisingly difficult to lick the first three chapters into shape when the rest of the ms is still --- how shall I put this? -- somewhat diffuse.

I have more respect for those folks who can finish and polish just Chapters One through Three, standalone, to submit of send off to contests. Freaking hard.

The Prologue is gone. (splash -- prologue overboard.)
Chapter One has been reduced to a mere nubbins of its original long and winding action.
Chapter Three -- where I am right now -- will now contain two POV flips.

I hate POV flips.
It's holding my fingers to the fire, trying to write them, but the heroine has got to show a larger POV presence in these early pages.

Technical Topic -- Buffer Words

There's stuff we don't have to say.

In POV,
what is described in visual terms, the POV character saw.
Every sound mentioned ... the POV character heard.
All thought and opinion happened in the POV character's head.

We can, if we wish, leave out the 'buffer words' like, 'he saw', 'she noticed', 'he felt', 'he came to the conclusion that', 'he remembered', 'he decided', 'it was his opinion that'.

– The crocodile turned lazily in the bathtub.
instead of ,
He saw the crocodile turn lazily in the bathtub.

– Lightning hit the citadel,
instead of
He heard lightning hit the citadel.

– She combed the werewolf's long brown hair,
instead of,
She decided to comb the werewolf's long shaggy hair.

 – This eggplant is a major mistake,
instead of,
He just knew this eggplant was a major mistake.


– Nobody made seaweed biscuits like his mom,
instead of,
He'd always believed nobody made seaweed biscuits like his mom. 

– The alien landing in '87 was just this bad,
instead of,
He remembered the alien landing in '87 was just this bad.

– She opened the knife drawer.  She must carry a knife tonight.  A large sharp one.
instead of
She opened the knife drawer.  She decided she must carry a knife tonight.  A large sharp one.


By leaving out 'buffer words' we streamline the prose. We connect the reader directly to the experience of hearing, seeing, touching, smelling.  We put the reader so deeply in the POV the character that the character becomes, herself, invisible.  We refrain from reminding the reader of the vessel of perception.  The reader becomes that direct vessel, perceiving the fictional world without buffer or intermediary.

If it matters that someone heard or saw or reached out towards ... we can add this. And if we have not been helpfully informing the reader that, 'Hey, look, Inga is seeing this or hearing this'  ... the reader will now perk up and take notice when we say 'Inga heard ...' The act of hearing has just become significant.

Chapter One of Jess, about final

A young friend, 14, said one of those wise things that always surprise me. Don't know why it should surprise me that she's wise at 14, but it does.

I was complaining how hard it was to rewrite these first three chapters so they'd be in final form to submit.
She said, 'They tell us in dance – When it starts being a job ... quit.'

In other words, if it's not fun, don't do it.

I don't know why this helped, but it did.


So ... Today I finished another jiggle-this-and-that-word-around of Chapter One. It feels about done.
IF it is not too dense.
IF it is not overwritten.
IF I have not lost touch with the POV character's emotion.

I'll set it aside for a week. May I can come back and make an assessment. I'm either astronomically way off and should redo the entire first quarter of the story ... or I'm about ok. I will get an expert opinion on which it is when I submit.


And onward to Chapter Two. Once again, my goal is to eschew the glib and dig deep into the character. Free the man up from the matrix.


So weird. I dreamed about the character Sebastian last night. Never done that before.

Blue Bird

There was a bluebird looking in the bluebird box.

(Everybody hold your breath.)

JoB

Chapter One JESS

You'd think there would be only so many times you could rewrite Chapter One and stare at it and go stomping around the house and come back and save it as a doc and put it away and start all over again.

You'd think.

I've spent a week doing this.
I think I'm getting closer.

It's all a matter of slipping into VERY deep POV.


Here are some opening lines ...

This was England, so it was raining. Not clean, angry rain that might have done some good washing the street. What she had falling on her was a drizzle like a spoiled child, sullen and persistent and whiny.

or ...

It was London, so it was drizzling. Fog crawled up out of the Thames, smelling of ghosts and bad dreams.

or ...

Jess hated the dark. Worse than rats were likely to come for her if she was out after dark.

And the latest --

Once you get a taste for thievery, you never lose it. Papa mentioned that from time to time, with a little clout to the side of her head so she'd know he was referring to her.

Grumble, grumble, grumble ....

In other news, I took the dog out late last night. It was snowing fluffy wet flakes the size of kittens. We sat and looked at them for a while in the light from the front porch.

Mid April. Whole bunch of surprised plants in my front yard.

ANNEKA line edits done

The line edits were completed last Wednesday and sent to the editor. Nice overnight service from DHL. They've been accepted. Now the ms goes to the copy editor.

So SPYMASTER'S LADY is essentially done.

Publication date has been moved to January 02. I'm really sorry about the date change. I would have liked to have the book on the shelves just before Christmas.

Now I have to rewrite the opening of JESS.

I wonder if I'm going to end up giving Sebastian a new name. I really like Sebastian.

ANNEKA Line Edit -- Day Fifteen

I've finished the line edits.
Over the weekend, I'll review them.
With luck, I'll send them off to New York on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning.

Today, I am, (among other things,) doing taxes.

Doing taxes makes my stomach ache.
Worrying about whether the line edits of ANNEKA will solve the Big Plausibility Problem makes my stomach ache.
Worrying about the opening of JESS makes my stomach hurt.
I am one unhappy puppy.

Last night I did a 'compare versions' on ANNEKA.
My, my, what a lot of little red additions I have made.

The big question hangs in the air -- Did I solve my major problem?
Did I make the big transition in the middle of the story?
Did I solve the Big Plausibility Problem?

We will see what the editor says.

In other news ...
I must rework the very beginning of JESSAMYN to make the protagonists more accessible.

I have pulled my Jo Beverley down from the shelf to leaf through the openings. How does she put the reader in touch with the characters? She's very introspective. Very much 'in voice'. This is what I need.

Anneka Line Edits -- Day Six

I should be calling this 'Spymaster's Lady' line edits, since that's the title. I think.

I'm on page 280 of the line edits.
Since this is the easiest part, I save it for when I'm too zonked to do anything else.
I get zonked doing these line edits. It's hard.

I have two major things I gotta do.

One -- I'm trying to plausible the central transitional plot device. I've backtracked and filled in some foreshadowing. Now I'm buckling down to the scene itself.
More work there.

Other -- I need to add backstory for my McGuffin.
I wander through the manuscript crying plaintively 'Where can I put in backstory?'
I can spend three hours fitting in 50 words.


In other news ... the Forum marathon starts tomorrow. I must gird my, like, y'know, loins

After the contract ...

After the agent comes back and says --
'They want to buy the manuscript ...'

-- The agent tells you what the publisher wants to pay and what rights are sold and when various stuff must be delivered.

-- You and the agent work out what you can reasonably negotiate

-- The agent goes forth and negotiates and brings you back the contract terms. You agree to them, probably. The contract is now sent niggling its way through the system.
This will take a long time.

-- The editor calls you and you get acquainted. You discuss the story. She says when her line edits will get to you.

-- She sends you line edits. When you need to get these back is probably covered under the contract. You are on the clock.

-- The editorial assistant e-mails you to say 'hello'.
"Hello."
and ask for a digital submission of the manuscript.
When you explain, in the return email, that it has not been line edited, she says they want it anyway.
This electronic form of the ms is for the Managing Editorial people.
Maybe those are the copy editors.
Maybe they are aliens from space.
I do not know.

The editorial assistant, when asked, discovers that the ms should be sent in .doc with the Italics underlined.
OK.

The editorial assistant also asks for
your picture,
a short bio,
a blurb (for what she calls the Title Information Sheet, whatever that might be,) and
information about the characters' appearance which might be useful to the cover people.

She says not to spend a lot of time on the blurb. It will be rewritten by the marketing people anyhow.

And that's as far as we've gotten.

(jo, manically writing a blurb for tomorrow.)