Posts Tagged by lament of the dove: fifth draft
Ladies and gentlemen, Draft Five is a WRAP
| February 13, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Valor of the Healer |
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.
Chapter 21, by gods
| January 31, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Valor of the Healer |
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Chapter 21 remains the longest chapter in the current draft of Lament of the Dove, even after I’ve reached the end of it tonight in the Word Count Reduction pass. Not too many words taken out of it at all, but that doesn’t strike me as a bad thing; a lot happens in it, and nothing in it feels extraneous to me at this point. I think I did well to find a couple hundred words I could trim at all.
This leaves Chapter 22 and Chapter 23 to get through, since I’ve already touched on Chapter 24 by removing Nine-Fingered Rab’s last scene. If I get ambitious, I could maybe finish off this draft by the end of the week, and that would give me most of the month of February for the hardcore final changes before I fling the manuscript back at Carina Press.
Meanwhile, I’m already mulling a couple of changes of notable nouns: the name of the former nation of Alendar, as well as Celoren’s horse. I’ve been told “Alendar” is too close to “Adalonia” as a nation name, so I want something shorter and starting with a consonant, ideally no more than two syllables. That, however, will come in in the sixth draft.
This feels like a good plan. Let’s see if I can implement it. Wish me luck, folks.
What happens when you don’t make quota
| January 17, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Valor of the Healer |
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Well, I didn’t make it a whole month before hitting a day when I just could not make myself write anything. It’s frustrating, but it reminds me of two related and equally critical things I’ve had to learn to keep in mind when working on my projects.
One: it’s okay to have a day here and there when I don’t write anything. There are writers who can churn out several thousand words a day; I am not one of them. I do have a full-time day job, and that does slurp up a considerable amount of my daily ration of Brain. Especially during weeks when I’m running short on sleep, when I’m all thyroid-y, or both. Like this past week. I spent all of Saturday, pretty much, thinking “well gosh I should write something”, and wound up playing a lot of Unwell Mel and watching crappy movies instead.
Two: while it’s okay to have an off-day every so often, I can’t let myself default to that, not if I want to get anything done. So I made a point of writing a page in Bone Walker last night, and tonight, I yoinked some more words out of Chapter 20 of Lament.
I’m not bothering with posting actual numbers tonight, since I’m still sort of sleep-deprived and thyroidal. But this is me saying that yes, for the last two days in a row, Writing Things Did Happen. Slow, small writing things, but as long as they happen, I’ll get there in the end.
Oh hey look Chapter 20!
| January 9, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Bone Walker, Short Pieces |
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I’ve finally pulled through the end of Chapter 19, and now I’m in Chapter 20! I’ve noticed that Chapter 19′s the only one in this draft of Lament thus far to have actually gained a couple hundred words, but that’s okay–I’d actually pulled in content from Chapter 17, after all. Given how much I’ve edited out of the chapter to make up for that, winding up with only a couple hundred extra words works for me.
Chapter 20 is one of the smaller ones in the last stretch of the book, so I’m not sure yet how much I’ll edit out of it yet. But it’s good to get the momentum going again.
Meanwhile, I’ve pinged my editor 
serasempre
Which leads me into thinking that Oscar’s story may well wind up in the FB universe now, and and that it could wind up being a novella. That’d work quite a bit for me. I’m thinking that Oscar’s story, Elizabeth and Ross’s story, and Millicent’s origin story would be a lovely trio of things to have in one book.
More on this to come!
Writing activity for the 8th
| January 9, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Valor of the Healer |
Small progress through Chapter 19 of Lament, pretty much, since most of my day had to go to other activities. I’m on page 19 of 23 at this point, though, so if I apply myself I should be able to finish the word count reduction for this chapter tomorrow!
I’ve been continuing to mull Oscar’s story in the back of my brain, and while I don’t have a real core plot idea for it yet, I do have a couple of beginning ideas. One, it’s possible this story may be non-urban fantasy, by which I mean, contemporary fantasy NOT in an urban setting. It may be rural/small town, and specifically, coastal. Two, I’m keying off a remark solarbird
Possibly whales. Possibly dragons.
More on this as it happens, y’all!
Keeping the editing momentum going
| January 6, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Valor of the Healer |
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Not much in the way of raw word count reduction tonight, but I did make it through roughly six pages, and I am in the final third of Chapter 19 now. The best thing about this effort, I think, is finding one actual typo: a redundant use of a word in a sentence. And I found a couple other places where I used the same descriptive label twice too close together.
But that’s about all I had time for tonight since tonight also involved Irish session goodness! And it’s just after midnight now, and I have to go to bed.
Edited tonight: -138
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,586
Lament of the Dove revised total (fifth draft): 105,554
Accountability, I has it
| January 2, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Valor of the Healer |
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Two days in a row getting writing-related things done! So far, so good.
Today’s effort, scattered across several hours through the course of the day, was editing about eight pages in Chapter 19 of Lament. This puts me just shy of halfway through the chapter, and so far I haven’t lost much significant word count. We’ll see what the rest of the chapter does for me, though it may just be that I don’t need to whittle this one down all that much.
Which’d be nice, since it has some of my favorite Julian and Faanshi mileage in it:
Before Julian could say more, Faanshi stirred and whimpered, horror flickering across her countenance. All at once he grew conscious of the shape of her, of the press of her slight form against his own, and that at some point during their headlong rush her hat had gone missing. Her hair, uncovered, smelled of sweat and leather and pine needles.
“Carefully, girl,” he warned when her eyes opened.
“Julian?” Her voice was small and broken, and as her gaze shot up to his face she said his name again, with prayerful relief. “Julian!” Then she threw her arms around him, buried her face against his shoulder, and sobbed.
In consternation he froze, aware of something going loose and tender within him. After a moment his arms eased their grasp and shifted, as if of their own accord, to better hold her. “Tykhe,” he muttered. “Don’t cry.”
“I don’t mean to be a burden! Please don’t leave me!”
Hadn’t he promised to do just that on the run past Tolton, if she slowed him and Rab down or proved a danger? “I won’t,” said Julian nonetheless, that loose place within him broadening, threatening to rise into his throat, to cut off his speech. “I won’t leave you, Faanshi. It’s all right.”
When had he changed his mind?
That’s me, a sucker for making life difficult for the Rook!
Edited today and tonight: -91 (but that’s across eight pages)
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,724
Lament of the Dove revised total (fifth draft): 105,692
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