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Valor of the Healer

Six chapters left

Tonight, hoping to get a head start on the Great Editpalooza next week, I did some poking at the rest of Chapter 18 of Lament of the Dove. I am pleased to report that I have actually finished the edits on that chapter, as of this post!

This means I have six, count ’em, six chapters left to do and a nine-day vacation to do them in. I can do this thing. I WILL do this thing. And if I finish before the nine days are up, I’ll shift immediate gears into resuming throwing words at Bone Walker or whatever else will take them; the Internet hiatus will still be in effect.

So get your Anna in while supplies last, people! I will not be monitoring any of the social networks at all next week, and I cannot guarantee I’ll pay attention to journal or blog comments either. I will however keep an eye on regular email.

And for the curious, Lament is currently clocking in around 107K, which is about 3,500 words added back in as of this draft–most of which have come in with the entirely new scene I’ve written to replace the beginning of Chapter 18. This is still well within the range of word count limits Carina Press’s editor asked for. It’ll be interesting to see if any further substantial word count changes occur.

Wish me luck, folks.

September 1, 2011 by
About Me, Valor of the Healer, Writing

I have a cunning plan

Which is to say, I’m going to take the entire week of Labor Day off since I have the vacation time to spare, and work on finishing my edits. To further this goal, I will be also dropping off the net for the duration of that week. I’ll still be answering email, but I won’t be monitoring Twitter, Facebook, or Google+, and for the most part I’ll only be answering email sent directly to me (as opposed to any of the mailing lists I’m on, or comments on any of my posts).

Noting this now by way of general accountability. I may post status updates during that week–again, for purposes of accountability–but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer any comments on them.

We’ll see how much I can get done before then; any little bit I can get done before does after all further the goal. And anything I can write above and beyond finishing the edits on Lament will be bonus. Christopher and Kendis are looking VERY expectant in the back of my brain, you know.

So there you have it. If you think you might want to get a hold of me during that week for whatever reason, email, text, or phone will be best! If you think you should have those means of contacting me and you don’t, let me know.

August 12, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Gosh, that horse I have to get back on is awfully tall

My writing morale, for various reasons I won’t get into in a public post, has been pretty low for a while–another round of that self-defeating, self-perpetuating cycle that I daresay any writer who’s been at it for more than five minutes knows all too well. The only real cure for it is to just do the damn writing, and the simple fact that I’ve had an R&R to finish for a while has been enough to keep the morale from vanishing entirely.

So I dragged another 250 words out of my head tonight for Chapter 18 of Lament of the Dove. Even this tiny number of words has felt like an effort, but I don’t want to think of it like that; I’d rather think of it as a victory, tiny though it may be. And I’m going to write tomorrow, dammit, come hell or high water, gods willing and the creek don’t rise, etc. I can commit to writing tomorrow. Even if it’s twenty words. I will write tomorrow.

But now I have to go to bed.

August 5, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Lament of the Dove status check

As of last night I finished the fairly minimal edits on Chapter 17. This brings me into Chapter 18, which is perhaps the last place I need to add a seriously large chunk of new content–I need to create a whole new scene to go here. So this chapter will take me a bit.

It does mean, though, that I’m now within seven chapters of finishing this long, long edit pass. Wish me… not luck, but rather, the discipline and focus I need to just get this done.

July 19, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Lament of the Dove status report

My fellow Drollerie author Joely Sue Burkhart is running her Maynowrimo thing again this year–by which we mean, it’s a lot like Nanowrimo, only with a self-selected goal, in a much smaller group of authors trying to get some formal projects done.

I’m taking this as impetus to get edits on Lament of the Dove done, dammit. My goal: get the sixth and hopefully final draft finished by end of May. I’d really, REALLY like to get it back into Carina’s hands by mid-June, so consider this a preliminary call: anybody out there willing to beta read Draft Six? Beta reading previous drafts of Lament is not absolutely required, although anybody who has is more than welcome to jump in and tell me whether the changes I’m making generally overall improve things.

Note also to those of you who took a spin through the last draft: I’m not going line-by-line through changes, though I know some of you went above and beyond the call of duty and provided that level of detail in your feedback. I am however on the lookout for general commentary y’all made to me, such as watching out for overuse of semi-colons and such. Draft Six’s all about the bigger picture edits, and laying down a better ending to lead into Book Two.

FINALLY finished off Chapter 5 today–which was a hard one–and blew through all of Chapter 6. The next major changes are projected to fall in Chapter 12, so I’m hoping to charge through to that point in short order this week.

Here goes nothing. Wish me luck, folks.

May 8, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Ladies and gentlemen, Draft Five is a WRAP

I have just finished my word count reduction review of Chapter 24, the final chapter of Lament of the Dove. Y’all may recall that I’d already yoinked out a huge number of words from this chapter taking out Nine-Fingered Rab’s final scene, now targeted for the beginning of Shadow of the Rook. I did however want to make one last pass through it just to see if there were any other words I could lose.

Now that that is done, I can commence Draft Six. This will be the pass through which I will implement the bigger requested changes from both Carina’s editor and the beta readers who’ve given me the best feedback. I’m not going to go into detail on the planned changes here for purposes of avoiding spoiling anybody.

Suffice to say, instead, that Draft Five’s final word count clocks in at 104,504 words, some of which will come back as I add in new content for Draft Six. And Draft Six begins NOW.

February 13, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Which spelling looks best?

Those of you who’ve beta-read Lament of the Dove for me or who have been following my posts about the edits to it may recall that among the various bits of feedback I’ve gotten (both from Carina Press’ editor and from beta readers) is that it was a bit unclear as to the distinction between the nation of Adalonia and its smaller neighbor which it absorbed, Alendar. It was suggested to me that I rename one of them in order to help make the place names more distinct, and I’ve been thinking about that. Alendar is I think the one I want to rename, given that I’m less wedded to that name than I am Adalonia.

That got me to thinking. A lot of the names in this story are mutated versions of Gaelic names, but some of them were inspired by Norse-style names–like ‘Vaarsen’, Kestar’s last name, and a couple of other surnames of minor NPCs. So when I looked up what various place names in the real world are in Scots Gaelic, I was surprised to see that the Scots Gaelic for Norway is ‘Nirribhidh’.

That immediately grabbed my eye. If I finagle that around a bit the same way I’ve done other names in Lament, I may be able to come up with a replacement name for the unfortunately conquered nation of Alendar. The question is, what altered spelling would look best?

This is where you all come in. Tell me, o Internets, which spelling you like best? I do want this general idea of names and I think I prefer these vowels–they help create a different look than ‘Adalonia’ when reading, and a softer sound when I say it aloud. It’s also something that sounds in-universe like it might have been derived from an older Elvish name, which is appropriate given that the folk of Alendar have always been friendlier to the elvenkind than the Adalons have.

If you’re looking at this post on LJ or Dreamwidth, please click over onto the original post on the WordPress blog to vote on the poll. Otherwise, drop your vote in the comments!

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February 11, 2011 by