pameladean | Well, I do what I want, and I don't do what I should

Below the cut is a tedious brief account of the process of writing the book once known as Going North, followed by the most lamentable comedy that is the latest news of what I have to be doing with it to get it to publication.

I haven't checked the dates with my records, so they may be amiss.

In 2004, I sighed a contract to write a joint sequel to my previous novels The Whim of the Dragon and The Dubious Hills. The sanity and sense of this have been variously described. David said, temperately, "That'll be interesting." Eric remarked on the fact that I was bringing together the peculiar metaphysics of the Secret Country books and the even more peculiar epistemology of the Dubious Hills. But I wanted Ruth, one of the protagonists of Whim, and Arry, the sole viewpoint character and protagonist of Hills, to meet.

I had not finished a story since I turned in Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, which I think happened in 1997. I had started a lot of things and let them drop. I was neurotic in the extreme about writing this book. I was also using a new program that I was not at all in love with. So I refused to set up a master document in Open Office, which would have made getting a word-count as I went along a matter of two mouse clicks; and I refused too to do word-counts of individual chapters. David regularly threatened me with a screensaver or wallpaper or other versions of a task bar with the word count on it, and I refused to have anything to do with that.

I wrote and wrote and wrote. Some of the chapters were written in longhand in a composition book because I pulled a muscle in my shoulder and couldn't type. Most started out on the computer. Time went on. I did research and wrote up a proposal for a different novel. I researched the origin and organization of libraries, the weather and flora of Pennsylvania, the structure of educational institutions, walled gardens and gardening, shape-shifters, and the history of the printed word.

Ruth and Arry finally met, which gloriously altered the plot. I think the book was originally supposed to come out in 2007, but it may have been 2006. I missed that deadline, and a host of others. This utterly upset my editor's plans for bringing out a sequel within a reasonable time from having reissued Whim, and obliged her to continually put off reissuing Hills. She did not threaten or even scold me. At last, on New Year's Day of 2008, I sent off the manuscript.

While I was printing it, I emailed Sharyn and said that I was afraid it was a little long. She asked how long. So, at that point, after using Open Office for four years, I poked around and found out how to do a word count. Two hundred and fifty thousand words. Oh, well, I thought, that explains why it took so long. That's two books really. Sharyn concurred with this judgement and told me to split the book any way I liked. I worked on this, complaining about having to do an extra last chapter for the first volume and an extra first chapter for the second, but happy enough on the whole. I brought a lot of lurking subplots up to the surface and developed a lot of secondary characters, and put in a great many beginnings of other stories that would be fulfilled in the sequel -- what Ted (Ruth's cousin) was doing politically in the Secret Country, what Con (Arry's sister) was depredating in her quest to learn magic. I poked into the cultures of the various students at Heathwill Library. I tried to fathom some of the more arcane features of the Secret Country universe.

I sent off the first volume, still called Going North, to Sharyn in September of 2008, and the second, called Abiding Reflection, in April, I think, of 2009.

On September 1, Sharyn told me that she had talked with the person in charge of figuring out such things, and been told that two-volume fantasy novels that were not extremely commercial were tanking, and we really could not do this as a two-volume novel. I should, instead, cut the whole thing back to one volume.

I did not receive this news well at all. Eric heroically began to read the book again to help me figure out what could go. I spent quite some time thinking about revising it in terms that I hated using -- weight loss (ugh, ugh, ugh), carving a statue out of an existing statue, shaving, pruning, cutting. I really hated even thinking about it. I had got as far as deciding that the book would need to begin seven or eight chapters in from where I had started it when I decided to ask Sharyn what my upper word limit was. I knew they really liked 100,000 and that 250,000 was too long, since that had been the length of the first version. But I was hoping to maybe sneak up on 225,000, something like that. I had, in the two-volume version, about 370,000 words.

Sharyn relayed from the oracle that 100,000 words is already long for a YA novel, especially a complex or dense one, so I should really try for that length. and no more.

Oddly, this was not nearly the crushing blow that the original revelation had been. No dieting, shaving, carving, cutting, or pruning would retain the shape of either original version at 100,000 words. I would have to do something completely different. Secondary characters, subplots, hints at the sequel, would all have to go. This was a more dramatic set of changes, but thinking about it wasn't nearly so traumatic.

Apparently, to rejuvenate my writing skills, I needed to write a great huge sprawling set of scenes that could be sifted through for a shorter story. I used to do this in my head, but apparently my head wasn't interested in hosting a great sprawl this time around. I hope it will consent to do so next time, since this matter of taking five years to write a kind of variable star of a book, that swells up and then shrinks down again, is not really one I am comfortable with.

I have already had to do this once. The Whim of the Dragon was something like 200,000 words when I turned it in initially, and I had hopes of making it into two volumes. This idea was vehemently squashed by the publisher (not the same as my current publisher). They had, moreover, just fired my editor and were not actually interested in advising me about how to go about shrinking the book. I was just to do it, and not to be too slow about it, either. I did, and it's actually quite a good book, I think. But working on it was fairly hellish. I expect this time to be much better, and not just because I have the experience.

I think that several of my beta readers will hail this news with relief, while others will perhaps feel dismay. Sympathy is very welcome, but please do not snark about my publisher or editor, who are doing their very best for me, rather than leaving me to wander alone in the mirk. There is not necessarily a need to mourn all the cut characters and subplots, since some of them can go very handily into the sequel. Furthermore, I have the two-volume version safe in multiple backups, so that at some point it may perhaps be allowed to step out into the world.

I am sorry that the book will be even further delayed. I'll put it together (again) as fast as I can.

Pamela

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markiv1111.livejournal.com

There are times that I am very, very glad that I ultimately did not become a "real" writer (one who does novels) and this is one of them. I would not trade you places *at all* right now. Note that, though my plots were frequently weak in any event, I was never good at doing my own deletes, and I think I would consider being in your exact situation nightmarish. It would not surprise me at all, though, if I were in that situation, that I would not want snarking about your publisher or editor. There is frequently a big clash between what people want to do artistically, and what will sell. (Like it or not, I have had to deal with this as a commercial musician.) In any event, hang in there and please keep us posted.

Nate

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Well, I do what I want, and I don't do what I should

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