Monday 22 April 2013

One week to finish!

I've set myself a week (unrealistically, possibly) to finish the book. I managed, from a less promising place, to finish the last book for the competition in less than three days, and this time I'm allowing myself to sleep regular hours. I'm at 30k of edited words, and some of the later chapters don't need a lot of work (and some really do need significant rewriting). I reckon I've got about four or possibly five chapters to actually write and some of the later chapters are a bit sparse and thin. I tend to throw away the big action chapters in a sort of emotional shorthand (I write them fast because the action is racing in my head) so I need to go back and linger a bit on the details.

Book 1 is off to a typesetter (I'm so excited, even though I don't really know what that means) and a proofreader and then I get sent the printed pages to look for errors and typos that have survived repeated edits. So far everything's been in emails and Word files have been zipping backwards and forwards. Back to paper... Mind you, I see things on the printed page that I would completely miss on the screen, that's why I print copies off in Lulu to catch odd mistakes and repeated words.

This rewrite etc. would go a lot faster if I didn't start writing the blog, I suppose...displacement activity. It's like having a deadline for a 100k word assignment, but with less critical tutors...

2 comments:

  1. I'm always in awe of how quickly you can work - I'm sure you'll manage it! And it's so exciting about book 1. I can't wait to see it on the shelves!

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    1. I'm at 75k words edited today, but the back end of the book looks very untidy and there are horrible loose ends etc. I wish I wrote better first drafts...or second drafts, for that matter. As for working faster, the more you do the quicker you get, I think, but not having a 'proper job' really helps the most. Looking forward to your book 2 when you finish!

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