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alanajoliI don't know how normal novel schedules work, but the print on demand editing schedule is pretty quick. This means I get a quarter of the novel edited, I approve or reject the changes (and make my own changes), and I send it back to the editor. Normally, this is quick and easy and while I agonize over things being perfect, I largely accept the editor's changes, because I'm not one to quibble over word choice *too* much. (My current brilliant editor, Shawn Merwin, has made word choice in Departure quite happy.)
So my angst of the day comes from one tiny change that Shawn made. With a single word, he revealed that he had a completely different idea about the relationship between two characters than I had in my head. Crisis! I asked my first reader, Arielle Kesweder, for her interpretation of the same relationship, and, to my chagrin, she had the same reaction as Shawn. Major crisis! Two characters who I thought had one relationship apparently do not have it in the current version of the novel!
And so, the re-editing has begun. I had finished the first three quarters of the edit, but now, I've returned to the first two quarters and made more changes, and it's quite possible they'll lead to changes for the second half of the novel. What's worse is that now I'm insecure that there are *other* things that I had assumed as givens that my audience will never, never know.
On the up side, Shawn got one of the minor characters so well that he added a descriptive phrase that completely summed up the character's entire essence. So I figure I must have done something right.
Currently Reading: Wrong about Japan (nonfiction!). I believe I'll be picking up Yeats's Irish Folk and Fairy Tales tonight. I just finished a mystery novel (Widower's Two Step by Rick Riordan) and a romance novel (Talk Nerdy to Me by Vicki Lewis Thompson), so getting back to fairy stories seems like a good idea.
Web comic goodness: I just discovered Strange Candy (which has a Japanese name that abbreviates to OO, but I can't remember to save me). Very fun, especially if you know the outskirts of manga culture well enough to enjoy the commentary. I'm also enjoying the stuff on Baeg Tobar, but that should be no surprise, since I'm involved in it.
So my angst of the day comes from one tiny change that Shawn made. With a single word, he revealed that he had a completely different idea about the relationship between two characters than I had in my head. Crisis! I asked my first reader, Arielle Kesweder, for her interpretation of the same relationship, and, to my chagrin, she had the same reaction as Shawn. Major crisis! Two characters who I thought had one relationship apparently do not have it in the current version of the novel!
And so, the re-editing has begun. I had finished the first three quarters of the edit, but now, I've returned to the first two quarters and made more changes, and it's quite possible they'll lead to changes for the second half of the novel. What's worse is that now I'm insecure that there are *other* things that I had assumed as givens that my audience will never, never know.
On the up side, Shawn got one of the minor characters so well that he added a descriptive phrase that completely summed up the character's entire essence. So I figure I must have done something right.
Currently Reading: Wrong about Japan (nonfiction!). I believe I'll be picking up Yeats's Irish Folk and Fairy Tales tonight. I just finished a mystery novel (Widower's Two Step by Rick Riordan) and a romance novel (Talk Nerdy to Me by Vicki Lewis Thompson), so getting back to fairy stories seems like a good idea.
Web comic goodness: I just discovered Strange Candy (which has a Japanese name that abbreviates to OO, but I can't remember to save me). Very fun, especially if you know the outskirts of manga culture well enough to enjoy the commentary. I'm also enjoying the stuff on Baeg Tobar, but that should be no surprise, since I'm involved in it.
