bye, little book

 journal, shadow bound, shadow queen  2 Responses »
Apr 192010
 

This afternoon, I lugged to the post office a ream of paper otherwise known as the proofs of Shadow Bound, and sent them on their merry way to Allen & Unwin. The proofs are dead, long live the proofs!

It's actually kinda sad, in a way, because this is the last I'll see of this book. It's now officially all grown up (or as grown up as it will ever be under my care) and now I'm shoving it out the door to face the big bad world. Here's hoping I taught her how to swing a punch and speak politely (not necessarily in that order) well enough to survive out there.

One of my last tasks was to come up with a glossary of all the characters. SQ and SB aren't that character-packed, but they are quite political books, and the shifting relationships between the characters inform a lot of the plot. So a glossary for the back of SB seemed a good idea, a handy index for readers who haven't (re-)devoured SQ immediately prior to getting their hands on SB.

Only every time I tried to construct the glossary, each and every entry turned out to be rife with spoilers. I kid you not. At one point, this was my glossary (spoilers redacted):

Matilde: Protagonist. Daughter of Luitger (deceased) and Laleh (deceased), grand-daughter of Beata. Much-put-upon.
Beata: Matilde's paternal grandmother; also has the memories of Matilde's maternal grandmother (Shadi) in her head. By SB she SLIGHT SPOILER.
Dieter: Husband of Matilde because SPOILER. Smug.
Helena: Daughter of Beata, sister of Luitger, and thus Matilde's aunt. She SPOILER.
Renatas: Son of Helena (deceased), and thus Matilde's cousin. Right annoying prat. He SPOILER.
Sidonius: Ilthean general and SPOILER.
Amalia: Dieter's younger sister. Passionate and SPOILER.
Roshi: Matilde's Skythe cousin on her mother's side. In SQ she SPOILER, and SPOILER, and SPOILER; in SB she SPOILER.

Isn't that the most helpful glossary ever?

I settled for a family tree instead. It seemed less fraught.

 Posted by at 6:14 pm  Tagged with:

pretty sure the stuff in my kitchen sink has achieved sentience

 journal, shadow bound, writing life  6 Responses »
Apr 152010
 

Deb vs Proofs, so far:

  • One (1) paper cut gash, to Deb's right index finger
     
  • Several (5+) stubs to Deb's big right toe, because she keeps catching it on the chair or the corner of the desk when turning to check something on one of the stacks of paper on the floor
     
  • Three (3) separate instances of Deb being caught muttering to herself on public transport, causing irreparable damage to her facade of being (relatively) sane
     
  • One (1) moment of soul-crushing despair, on discovering a seemingly unsolvable plot snarl
     
  • Seven (7) nights of sleep deprivation, due to racing thoughts and the fact that proofs are, bet you didn't realise this, some kind of Lovecraftian horror what eats your brain
     
  • ZERO (0) instances of seagull-singing!
     
  • 473 pages full of little fixes: VANQUISHED

Huzzah! I think, technically speaking, the proofs are still ahead, given all the casualties they've inflicted on me. But I have slashed their innards with green ink, so at least I went down fighting.

There are still the big fixes to go, and when I mean big I mean like last night's effort — which involved 3 hours to fix a grand total of 5 pages. Oof. Word and page counts make fine and dandy targets, but they do not accurately reflect the thinking time that went into them. But I have all weekend to tackle said big fixes, which feels like glorious, copious quantities of time, so I'm quietly hopeful that I can do it without feeling too pressed by the deadline.

Now, did I miss anything interesting while I was buried in all those stacks of paper?

 Posted by at 7:46 pm  Tagged with:

seagull singing status: not yet

 journal, shadow bound, writing life  Comments Off
Apr 112010
 

So far, the proofs have taught me three things (or at least, three things which come immediately to mind).

First, a "brace" is a pair of something. Did you all know this? I did not. I was in fact under the impression that it denoted decidedly more than two. Dear proof-reader, thank you for questioning.

Second, enjoy those easy pages which have no mark-up, because sooner or later you're going to hit a page with one tiny little question that makes you realise you have previously farked up the plot in a rather horrifying way, and fixing it elegantly (which you must do, it being proofs stage and nobody therefore wanting to add too much more bulk to the book) takes a good four hours. To produce a paragraph. Oy vey. (I fixed it. But now I am not ahead on my target. Boo.)

Third, I do NOT, resolutely NOT, need a smaller desk. In fact, I may well need a much, much larger desk.

I have this pine monstrosity I've been thinking of getting rid of, it being too high for a short person such as myself, and I admit I've been toying with the thought of going all minimalist. A just-barely-enough work surface, which I would naturally keep sparse and clean. But the proofs have reminded me that such a wish is utter, utter folly.

Any desk I own will need to have a work surface large enough to contain the laptop, lamp and scanner (its normal accessories), plus room for the stack of pages I'm working on, the stack of pages I'm yet to go through, the stack of pages I've been through but may need to go back to or at least refer to, a notepad for "thinking out loud" or experimenting with the words I want before committing them to the page in question, and somewhere to put the scads of reference material such as maps, lists of names, issues to fix, &c. That's a whole lot of stacks of paper, and my pine desk is, despite being to my mind too large, not up to the task. I currently have drawers pulled open on either side of me acting as ad-hoc surfaces for supporting the reference material.

On the plus side, this means I don't have to find money for a new teeny desk any time soon. (And a new larger desk is not going to happen. If I have to I'll resort to the floor.)

I'm planning on putting that money I just "saved" towards the purchase of a new camera, so I can taunt you with pictures of Mongolia.

and they're all (well, mostly all) cousins

 shadow bound, writing life  7 Responses »
Apr 072010
 

The proofs for Shadow Bound landed today. The fourteen-day forecast is therefore for sudden squalls of insanity, the occasional seagull impersonation, an inability to discuss any topic that does not immediately relate to (for example) the placement of commas, and a general air of abstraction and sleeplessness.

Although, the proof reader has won my undying love for the following comment in her cover letter:

This was a thoroughly absorbing read. Lots of urst (please cast Viggo Mortensen or Hugh Jackman as Dieter), tension and complexities.

Heh. Heheh. I think it was only a couple of months ago I finally figured out what URST stood for,1 and now apparently I've written a book with sufficient URST to make at least one person think of Viggo.

I can live with that.

This evening, along with getting started on the proofs, I also wrote up the dedication and acknowledgements. My next task, concurrent with the edits, is to whip up some kind of character/house/tribe glossary — which I think is no bad idea, given that no less than 40-odd character and house names are mentioned in the first 60 pages. And this is a novel with actually not that many characters!

It's all starting to take shape people. Book!

  1. I'm slow on the uptake. But I know there's at least one person who also doesn't know what it means, so just for you, Mum: UnResolved Sexual Tension. [↩]

it's the end of the world as we know it

 shadow bound, shadow queen, writing life  5 Responses »
Oct 222008
 

My editor sent back the proofs with a few queries and additional suggested changes, so I spent yesterday slicing and dicing words and chapters.

LOTS of markup. To my surprise, however, this was a quick page to get through. Go figure.

LOTS of markup. To my surprise, however, this was a quick page to get through. Go figure.

Some I've-lost-count-pages later, it is done and all the chapters are of much less variable proportions. Subconsciously I must have known what I was doing, since I didn't have to chop any scenes to get the chapters to line up, but consciously I suspect my chapter formation process is along the lines of "How many pages since I last inserted a page break? Can't remember. This'll do. What do you mean I can't have a 300 page chapter followed by a 3 page chapter? The 300 page chapter has scene breaks, after all…"1

Thank the lord for editors, is all I can say!

Today, my brain feels like mush, but it's straight back to revisions on the sequel for me. I am having a dreadful time resisting the urge to start the revisions again from the first page each time I do an edit-pass on Shadow Queen and figure out some new writerly tic I need to eradicate. For example, I suspect I have an aversion to joining words so deep-seated it makes my eternally patient editors and proofreaders weep with frustration. Um…oops?

  1. Some authorial exaggeration is to be expected here. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story is what I say. [↩]

sometimes i find myself alone at night

 journal, shadow queen  6 Responses »
Sep 162008
 

The proofread is done, long live the proofread.

Technically I shouldn't celebrate quite yet, since my editor hasn't told me there's nothing else I need to look at and please send it all back now, but that stack of tagged and tricksome pages has been systematically slashed through with red pen and denuded of tags, which makes me happy. Not to mention a little giddy.

And very, very conscious that the stories next in line to work on have no outline. I've been revising for so long, it's a little daunting to contemplate going back to writing without knowing what happens next.

In the department of "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means", I discovered a fantastic thesaurus program the other day: TheSage.

Since I'm reaching the end of my input on Shadow Queen, it's probably an appropriate time to post the playlist I used to listen to while writing this novel. Continue reading »

the road holds great danger

 journal, shadow queen  6 Responses »
Sep 092008
 

The coloured tags mark out the pages which were too tricksome to fix on the first pass. Tricksome could mean the fix involved multiple pages, or finding a more elegant phrase which refused to come to mind at the time, or even that the fix simply required more from me than inserting a missed comma and thus was more than my sleep-deprived brain could handle that particular night. In other words, some will not actually be tricksome. Here's to hoping the latter form the majority of the fixes remaining!

But I do not think I will be working on the manuscript today. For today I came home to a smashed pane on the front door, and a ransacked house.

So far as I can see, they've only taken my jewellery, some loose cash, my old iPod, my chargers (ipod, mobile phone, and digital camera — I'll miss those until I can replace them!), and my backpack to carry it all out in. The jewellery is a blow, not because it was worth all that much but because of the sentimental value: every piece I had was a gift from someone precious to me. I'm somewhat astonished that they didn't take the laptop, which was sitting in plain view, or the LCD monitor of the desktop. It's possible, however, that I surprised them and they were still in the house when I came home — which is not a particularly pleasant thought.

I have spent the afternoon cleaning up after their mess, and the police forensic fellow's dust, and tonight I plan to enjoy a hot shower and some TV watching. Preferably involving crims getting their comeuppance.

Max thought the forensic police officer had placed all that lovely dust on the table in the sunshine just for him to loll about in. Helpful critter.

we're living with the lost and found

 journal, shadow queen  2 Responses »
Sep 072008
 

Today featured a walk to the local park, where we did not find koalas, but we did find roosters. Very well-fed glossy roosters who declined to spend any time eating our bread. We also found the playground infested with other people's children, which was mostly okay except for the little girl who kept telling us to "Go away!" Luckily, Brutus, despite being half her age, was larger than her and had stronger pushing power and sorted her out quickly enough.

So, because I clearly have too much time on my hands it made such a good distraction, lolchildren.

This was the steepest kid's slippery dip I have ever seen. It was nearly vertical.

I wish I was joking about this, but we really did spend most of the visit to the park taking tanbark out of Brutus' mouth. Apparently it is tasty.

In writing news, I have only 30 pages left of proofs…before I get to go through and work on the pages I've tagged as requiring multiple-page fixes.