Midweek update

By Holly Lisle

I think sound effects would probably be the best way to start this. Maybe a groan, followed by the sound of a head thudding repeatedly on something hard.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s going well. But {groan, thud, thud, thud} this is not a kinder, gentler revision.

I started with the line-for-scene. Finished that on Monday, but it took ALL day.

I outlined 38 scenes, only four of them brand new, so that was pretty good. However, the other stats on the line-for-scene were not so sweet.

Remember, in the four-color index-card line-for-scene:

GREEN=”no change up to 24% change necessary”
YELLOW=”25%-49% change necessary”
ORANGE=”50%-74% change necessary”
RED=”75%-burn it and start fresh”

Out of 38 scenes, then:

3 were green.
7 were yellow. (At this point, those of you comfortable with arithmetic are saying ‘uh-oh.’)
7 were orange. (Perhaps at this point, there are a couple of ‘yipe, yipe, yipe’s.)
21 were red.

I was also behind schedule, so I refigured pages to edit per day for just the four days I had left, and screamed. Added in Saturday and Sunday of this week, and re-refigured pages per day and came up with about 46 pages per day, which, considering the number of big rewrite and huge rewrite scenes, is brutal. But doable, as I’m here to attest. I’m now on page 152 of a 260 page manuscript, I’m back on deadline, and I have a stack of brand new handwritten pages to type in.

I also have three endings. I love all of them. That, however, is not today’s problem.

Have been working since 6 AM, am done for today, and am really, really tired. But….

I like what I’m getting. If it keeps up like this, perhaps my editor’s revision will not be as brutal as mine is. (That’s always the way you hope things will go.)

Thanks, too, for the good karma wishes, both on the writing and the kid. I appreciate them very much.

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