Always know where your towel is.
Today was another good day. I had lots of stuff to do at work—a project going to production, with a new process in place—but most everything went well. While the computers were processing the new project, and while the printers were pumping out reams of paper (part of my job involves publishing, so I do big print jobs), I had time to work on Nereids.
I did an entire edit of Ch11 and sent it out to the reality team. They’ll chew on it for a few days and spit out the pieces when they’re done. They really don’t spit much out, but when they do, I take them seriously.
After Ch11, I revised Ch5 based on my editor’s comments. He had two good suggestions, which required a bit of rewriting. Well, not so much rewriting as shifting something later in time and smoothing the transitions. I think it works quite a bit better now. So, thanks, Mr. Editor.
I also spent a lot of time re-reading Ch5. It’s one of my favorite chapters, even though it has little or no sex. It’s an action-packed chapter, with lots of emotion. It also defines David Hughes’s character in many ways. So I enjoy reading it. To me, that’s the sign of good writing (if I do say so myself). In general, I enjoy re-reading most of my writing. Most is the key word, however. Some of it is okay… good enough. But some of it—like Ch5—I could read over and over. I don’t know why. If I did, I’d put that into all of my writing. But I don’t know, so I can’t.
Anyway, that’s the editing portion of tonight’s post.
After I finished with Ch5, I started writing.
Quick side note: I’ve noticed something about myself… when I don’t have a firm grasp on where the next scene needs to go, I tend to “go micro.” In other words, I get down on the character-and-dialog level and just write a scene. Unfortunately, I need to keep Ch12 at a macro level, at least for these interstitial scenes. So I scrapped the 300-400 words that I’d just written. Then I compressed the same thing into 2 sentences and moved on.
I still “went micro” more than I wanted to, but I also decided to cut a scene I’d been planning for a while. In the final analysis, the cut scene isn’t crucial. I can handle the necessary transition with dialog and building sexual tension. So I could afford to go micro, if only a little bit.
I wrote 1,200+ words today, which is a good day. That’s about 2½ hours of writing and re-writing. (Remember, that doesn’t include any of the editing I did today… about 4 hours’ worth.) Chapter 12 is already 10,000+ words, though, so I need to bring it to a finale soon. It’s going to be a mega-chapter, but I don’t want to go over 15,000 words (Ruthie’s Club prefers 6-9,000 word chapters). Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m going to write whatever it takes to have the chapter build convincingly and finish with an appropriate bang (pardon the pun), but I do try to work within my publisher’s guidelines.
In any event, I’m ready to finish Nereids. It’s my first third person limited story, and I think I’ve done a reasonably good job with it. In some ways, first person writing is quite a bit easier. In other ways, first person imposes some pretty strict limitations, since the narrator has no way to know what’s going on unless he has a frame of reference and first-hand experience.
(Paul and his obliviousness to Gina’s cocaine use in Summer Camp - Book 3 is a prime example of this. As much flak as I get from the smug, worldly, and oh-so-wise armchair analysts—who conveniently forget that they have years, sometimes decades more world-experience than Paul, not to mention 21st century information overload—I will defend my writing of Paul and his blind eye to cocaine. Sure, it seems obvious to us what was going on, but we don’t have to live “in the moment” like Paul does. Nor do we have to live in pre-”Just Say No” days, when cocaine was a party drug without the sinister media coverage we see today. So nyah, all you modern nay-sayers. I know my characters, and I know my setting, so no amount of Monday-morning quarterbacking is going to change my mind on this. I’m right and you’re wrong. So there! But I digress…)
As far as I know, Nereids is on schedule for publication at Ruthie’s Club next Monday (July 17th). The standard exclusivity period is six months, and then you can read it for free on my site, along with all the others I post to regularly. But Ruthie’s Club has a lot of great stories to offer, and it’s updated once a wek. So it’s a worthwhile subscription. Check ‘em out.
Anyway, that’s probably enough for tonight. It’s well after midnight, and I need to wind down and head to bed.
- Nick
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4 Responses to “Always know where your towel is.”
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As the BBC report attached (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4318898.stm) shows, it’s still a party drug. After getting involved in some of the “smug, worldly, and oh-so-wise armchair analysts” commentary, I did some research of my own. This is just one example that I found. Take it backwards 24 years… Nick’s right, I (and all those others) was wrong; I’ve got over it and I hope the others do too.
Nice insights into your writing again, Nick. I can’t thank you enough for sharing them with us and I look forward to seeing Nereids “Real Soon Now”!
Nick, I’m with you on the matter of Paul and cocaine. I was around that age at around that time, and cocaine just wasn’t part of the world. In fact, the first time I read SC, I didn’t really pick up the clues until you almost rubbed my nose in it. (Couldn’t resist.) The second time through, knowing what was to come, I spotted them right off and went along saying, “Gina, no! Kendall, stop that!” I actually had to stop reading for a while… as if it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t read it. Talk about getting wrapped up in a story!
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel it says, is about the most massively useful thing an intersteller hitchhiker can have.
I just had a thought, I know that is a very rare occurance. Does this mean that space aliens are going to appear in your writings?
