Revisions

[pameladean]

I don't want to work on my revisions, so I'm going to write about them instead. I'm hoping that this will be a head-clearing activity, because in truth I am sadly muddled.

What needs to be done falls into several categories.

1. Split the huge volume into two, possibly writing a bit of fancy framework to prevent readers of the first part from feeling that they have just fallen off a cliff, and innocents who pick up the second part first from feeling that they were just fine a moment ago and what is all that rock rushing by them? Think of titles for the two volumes.

2. Deal with strong negative reactions to the ending suffered by several, though not all, of my beta readers, without disturbing the experience of those who liked it. These objections cover the motivations of the characters, consistency with the earlier books, and political implications of various kinds.

I did not anticipate the need for the above. For what's below, I did:

3. Put intimations of various important objects and characters and themes that suddenly leapt up in the second half into the first half, in a decent fashion, so that they do not come out of nowhere and cause the wrong kind of alarm.

4. Clear up ambiguities, at least to a point.

5. Give the first volume some kind of narrative movement. Or not. I'm still up in the air on this one.

6. Clean up all the fiddly, line-by-line problems with voice, clarity, pacing, theme, and so on, so that they all do what they are supposed to, unless what they are actually doing is better, in which case, leave them strictly alone.

7. Cut where possible, from single words to lines to scenes, since some new material must go in and both these volumes will still be awfully long.

8. Agonize about how long some of the chapters are, but decide to try to preserve the viewpoint switches. Oh, right, and write another Arry chapter, if possible, because I muddled up the viewpoint switches. Yargh.

No. 1 has to be the last thing I do, I think, except that thinking of titles is running as a background process and also serving as a form of cat-vacuuming, since I can look up quotations and pretend it's research. No. 2 terrifies me, but I've done a great deal of work on it, and have at least as much left still to do. No. 3 is going very well and is nearly finished, except for the water-clock. No. 4 has been tackled but needs more work. No. 5 is on hold. No. 6 is going quite well, though it will have to be done separately for all the new bits. No. 7 is not happening at all except that occasionally I'll take out a word or two. I can see such trouble. No. 8 is ongoing, except for the actual writing.

P.

Comments

[guppiecat]

Ooh, it's a project plan without a gantt chart! (It's rare, take a photo!)

It sounds to me, like you should focus on #3, as once that's done, it'll fall off the stack and free brain space for the others. #4 would fall into the same boat. Once that's done, you have some pretty specific "has to be done now" (#1, #2) tasks, "has to be done later (#6, #7)" and "maybe needs to be done" (#5, #8) tasks.

So, from what I see, you just have two things to work on ASAP (#3 and #4), and once that's done, there are the architectural questions of #1 and #2 that must be solved before you spin your wheels on the later stuff. Once those are done, I suspect that #6 and #7 will be easier and it will be much more clear as to whether #5 and #8 are necessary.

Granted, I don't know this particular book (though I've read the others, and am awaiting this one), and writing a book isn't an IT project. However, if there are similarities, perhaps this is helpful.

If it's not, sorry. At least I tried.

[raphaela.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about having a favorite author is waiting for the new books. The best thing about having THIS particular favorite author is that she is yet living, and producing new books. =) I am excited for your finished product.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Put intimations of various important objects and characters and themes that suddenly leapt up in the second half into the first half, in a decent fashion, so that they do not come out of nowhere and cause the wrong kind of alarm.

Oh thank god Real Writers like you and matociquala write honestly about this, otherwise I think I might go work at the phone company or something (then again, that might be a benefit to modern prose, or a disaster for the phone company, I'm not sure).

//offers virtual non-allergen Nutella

(Also, not that I EVER fall into the elljay habit of Offering Unsolicited Advice or anything, but wrt 1. Tolkien did pretty well with all the rock rushing by various readers in The Two Towers, yeah? ....then again the publishing climate is considerably different now, sigh.)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I have a question about 5. Why wouldn't you want to have narrative movement? Do I even know what narrative movement is?

About 6 and 7--if you are going to add to these, you need to cut somewhere, and when you're revising is the time, instead of in desperation at the last minute.

[aedifica]

Thank you for thinking of the framework mentioned in #1--it is nice to know that the book you just finished reading isn't supposed to be the whole thing. I ran afoul of that the first time I read The Secret Country and The Hidden Land--I bought them thinking it was a two-book series and then agonized over the ending, which is a perfectly good ending for a book within a series, but not a good ending for a series. Then I mentioned it to badger2305, saying "And I know she's a better writer than that!" (Meaning, I knew you wouldn't have ended a whole series that way, but the evidence seemed to say you had.) He raised one eyebrow and said "You do know there's a sequel, don't you?" And I sought it out and read it, and my faith in your good writership was vindicated.

By the way, I recently re-read The Secret Country, The Hidden Land, The Whim of the Dragon, and then The Dubious Hills. I had never read DH so close after the others before, and this time I caught all (or I think all) the references to the history of the Secret Country. I liked that, it added depth to both stories for me.

And oooh--if you're splitting the book, that means sometime in the next few years I get to read two new books from you! Objectively I know it will probably be about the same amount of book as if you hadn't split it, but it will feel like more.

(I apologize if this comment shows up three times. LJ is being difficult about posting comments just now, so I've tried to post this twice before.)

[kate_nepveu]

Sounds like a lot--I'd feel muddled too, contemplating all that.

Still looking forward to meeting the monster when it's ready for its public.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

God, I hate revisions. I feel your pain. I want to read the result.

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

I did the same thing, but had a different take— that the ending was "strange and adult" (read: mainstream fiction.) In other words, it's time to grow up and put the toys away.

I didn't find out about The Whim of the Dragon for almost a decade, and had to borrow it from a friend who got it on inter-library loan. I was SO happy when it came into reprint.

[eub.livejournal.com]

except for the water-clock

It is always the water-clock, isn't it.

water thieves

[arkuat]

What is a water clock but a fancy sandglass? Worry about no waterclocks. Clepsydras are just water stolen, dripping, to tell the time and not to be drunk.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Well, good luck with all that!

Re: water thieves

[timprov.livejournal.com]

And fancy sandglasses are awesome.

[pameladean]

Um, well, actually, I did put some extra stuff at the end of TSC and the beginning of THL to make the cut less raw. However, the publisher, for inscrutable publishing reasons (or sheer cussedness, which is my actual theory) refused to indicate on the first volume that there was more to come, even though they had already bought and paid for the second one. I have actually never forgiven them for that.

I've been told that story by badger2305, who was quite pardonably smug about it. Nice to meet you!

I will try hard to make the cut less abrupt, but it really is one book, so there will be limits. However, the present publisher is not crazy, and the two volumes will be out in the same calendar year.

P.

[pameladean]

Hee. It will be a kindly monster by then, no longer tearing up the underbrush.

P.

[pameladean]

I was planning on foisting the revised version upon you for comments, actually, if you've got the time.

P.

Re: water thieves

[pameladean]

I dread the description, alas. You have just made a fairly Patrick-like remark, albeit in different language. How I do miss Patrick. He could explain it all in a heartbeat.

P.

Re: water thieves

[pameladean]

Ooo!

P.

[pameladean]

*snorfle* Thanks!

P.

[pameladean]

You're talking about the end of The Hidden Land, right? Whereas aedifica is talking about the end of The Secret Country, of which the last words, because I thought I was a bit cleverer than I was, are "no answers."

The original ending, conceived when I was about sixteen, was even more mainstream and literary and world-wearily adult than the apparent ending of THL, but I got over it. 8-)

You would think I'd be over this, too, but I'm actually still mad at the publisher for the way that they handled Whim. It got orphaned because they fired my editor, had no publicity and had its publication date repeatedly moved until they had to either publish it or, by the terms of the contract. give it back to me; it might have been better if they'd done the latter. Snarl.

However, all is now copacetic.

P.

[pameladean]

Suddenly I feel that we are in a Thurber book.

P.

[aedifica]

A good publisher seems to be a jewel above rubies--alas that not all publishers are good publishers. I'm glad the current one is at least not crazy. :-)

(And I just realized what your userpic is. Neat!)

[aedifica]

Actually I too was talking about the end of The Hidden Land. I knew there were two books in the series, I just didn't know there were three.

Come to think of it, I have no idea how The Secret Country ends. Every time I've read it, I've come to the end and immediately picked up THL, so they flow together in my head.

[pameladean]

Whoops, sorry. Reading too fast, I expect.

P.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Yes, please!

[pameladean]

This made me laugh, because over the years David and I have discovered that there is indeed a lot of similarity between writing and IT projects, even up to getting a little neurotic about certain pieces of a project that don't seem to deserve it. ((I am neurotic about the water-clock at the moment.)

Your comment is actually quite cheering, because what you recommend is pretty much what I've been doing -- doing anything other than Nos. 3 and 4 just led me around in a circle where I thought, "No, wait, it's too soon for that, you haven't done X or Y yet." But it's nice to have laid it all out, and reassuring to see somebody with an organized mind come to the same conclusion. Thanks!

P.

[pameladean]

I'm very sorry to be so slow. But I think it'll be nice and complex when it's done.

Also, you're making me blush.

P.

[pameladean]

Oh, yeah, I got simmilar solace when I was still struggling (not that I'm not struggling now, but it's a DIFFERENT struggle) from writers further along the path who frankly discussed their processes, warts and all. So I"m trying to pay forward a little.

Don't work for the phone company. You'd hate it.

Oh, how I wish there were Nutella without milk. Yum.

I take your point about Tolkien. My editor seems fairly unconcerned about that aspect of things. I really got beaten up by enraged readers about the split between the first two Secret Country books, but what I need to remember is that that publisher wouldn't indicate on the first book that there was more to come. With a nice "Volume I" in evidence, maybe people won't get so mad.

P.

[pameladean]

I'm not completely sure that I know what it is, which may be the problem.

I tend to set up situations slowly and have a lot of seemingly-mundane events and conversation happening for long stretches, and then it all comes to a crisis and you see (one hopes) how the crisis built up slowly through the mundane events. But the point where you see this is in the second half, well in. I am not very good at restructuring and am trying not to think about having to do that. I thought that instead there could be some more evident problem in the first volume that actually gets resolved, so that people don't feel that they read all that way for no narrative "pay-off." I don't read this way myself and would be perfectly happy with a book like the first half of Going North, but it's a bit hard on other kinds of readers.

P.

[pameladean]

Peg Kerr made it for me -- she did me icons for each of my book covers, but this may be the coolest. It really works as an icon, amazingly well.

P.

[pameladean]

If all goes really well, I'll hand it to you at Fourth Street.

Well, I imagine that emailing it to you would work a lot better, really. In any case, it's more likely that I'll be done at the end of June or early in July.

P.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I understand exactly what you're talking about. I do think you need to have some sort of narrative pay-off or resolution in the first volume. As a reader, I'd be unhappy without something like that. (I think I am your "other" kind of reader.)

I think of novels as wave-forms. Potboilers are a series of sharp, steep crescendoing waves. Romance novels are like a sine wave with an increasing amplitude.

I've no idea if this makes any sense or not, so I'm going to stop now.

[raphaela.livejournal.com]

I don't mind slow at all.

When I was eleven, I was reading my way through the Chronicles of Narnia (up until then I had only known of TLTW&TW) and was in the middle of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I took with me to read during surgery on my foot. While the doctor was working on my foot, he commented on my book and said something about CS Lewis having died the same day as John Kennedy. I was horrified. That meant CS Lewis wasn't writing any more books! And I actually cried.

Then I was afraid to finish reading the series because I knew how much I was going to want more, and more would never come. Kind of like discovering T-Rex after Marc Bolan's death. Oh well.

But you are, you are my favorite person to read because I love so much what you do with words. It isn't empty flattery.

[pameladean]

Oh, I know it's not empty flattery. You wouldn't do that.

I have a C.S. Lewis story like that, a little. I was reading his essays and decided that I wanted to write him a fan letter. On the back of one of my books, I recalled dimly, it said where he taught. It did say that. But what it first said was, "Until his death in 1963, C.S. Lewis..." It was 1968, and I was fifteen, but I burst into tears.

P.

[pameladean]

I'm sure it makes as much sense as my thinking of novels as patchwork quilts.

P.

[pameladean]

And I'm not surprised that they flow together in your head, because that was how they were written.

P.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

That's because of the differing ways we look at narrative, perhaps?

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

IIRC something like that happened to poor truepenny with the first book in the Labyrinth sequence -- there was no hint clue or whisper this was book one of FOUR, and a number of reviewers complained about the way she left plot threads dangling. I think it's that publishers now don't want to advertise books as a series, because they're afraid people won't buy the later books because they'll think readers think they have to've read everything....? Very odd when you consider serial publication was a mainstay of publishing for a looong while (cf Dickens) and when I were a wee one ((cough creak tap cane)) you practically HAD to write a series if you wanted to be in Speck Fic. I have noticed a preference for serial fiction on the internet, tho (fanfic, writers selling subscriptions/access to sites, Shadow Unit).

I think maybe it's the influence of (bad) television....where every episode is supposed to be self-contained and have no consequences so it can be shown out of order in syndication (altho most shows I see in syndication now actually _do_ go in order....) and yet advertisers want to keep people watching for years. Then again there's also a big influx of serial television stories (Lost, Heroes, BSG)....

I have now thoroughly confused myself, which is usual.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Yes, the same thing happened to me.

I did get to see Owen Barfield once, but it's hardly the same thing.

Re: water thieves

[(Anonymous)]

I miss Patrick too. And Ellen. Hi I'm Bill and stumbled into this realm by sheer accident. But since I am here, I want to say that ever since I first read The Secret Country trilogy, it has been my favorite series of books, and I continue to utter its praise. I am here looking for snippets of news about Going North and here there is news, which is wonderful. I cant wait.

Re: water thieves

[pameladean]

Hi, and welcome! And thank you.

I have, I frankly confess, not had any luck in figuring out how to get Patrick and Ellen back into the story they so firmly bowed out of.

I did put the water clock into Going North, however.

P.