Editing, Round 1

I am actually for serious editing this massive behemoth of a project. When I wrote The Apprentice Wizard back in 2007, I knew, in my heart, I wouldn't really publish it. So I didn't bother editing it.

But I want to publish Seafear. I really, really want to. I have faith in the story and the writing, and I think it could be a successful novel. And so I'm editing it.

Editing is a very boring process, and it's very slow. I reread Seafear over the past few days, and I wrote down my initial reactions after finishing it. The good thing is, I'm not embarrassed by it. I'd be fine showing this to friends and family (actually, my mother has picked it up and is 18 pages in). I found a few plot holes, but I think those are fixable.

Now I'm reading it for a second time. I've got eight pads of sticky notes, and I'm going line-by-line and reading Seafear again. Anything that sounds weird, or any inconsistencies I find, I leave a sticky note with some brief thoughts on it. It took me about an hour to read through chapter one (punctuated with watching some Michael Jackson documentary -- a guilty pleasure), and I have about one note per page.

This is going well. I'm excited. I'm not following one of the most basic words of advice I've heard from a lot of authors -- put the book down, don't look at it for a few weeks. But I'm afraid if I don't start now, I'm going to lose steam. I wrote more than half of this book in less than a month (it was a month ago today that I first got some real headwind on it and pushed through what I was stuck on), and I'm still running strong.

In other news, I've started a detailed outline for Seafear's sequel. I don't have the energy to do that and edit, so that's going on the wayside for now. I need to concentrate on Seafear before I think extensively on its little brother.

Epigraph

I've settled on an epigraph for Seafear, now that I've finished the damned book:

"Though the seas threaten, they are merciful." -The Tempest, Act 5, Scene I

It's from The Tempest, which is pretty much the definitive literary work in my life. I think the whole of my approach to storytelling -- or at least the telling of Seafear -- has been informed by The Tempest. I played Prospero in my high school's production of it in 11th grade, and that's when a lot of my literary voice was being cemented.

The line is spoken at the tail end of the play. The wizard, Prospero, has just united the King of Naples with his son. Both the king and his son thought the other had drowned in the titular storm, and it provided a significant amount of wangst for both Alonso and Ferdinand; but when they're reunited, Ferdinand says that line. I think it perfectly encapsulates the idea behind Seafear.

Let It Be Known

Let it be known, that in the early hours of the morning of Thursday, June 25, 2009 (4:08 AM to be specific), I finished Seafear.

Final statistics:

Chapters: Nineteen (one prologue, seventeen chapters, one epilogue)
Word count: 81,227 words (subject to change, obviously)
Page count: 362 pages

Sweet Jesus damn, I am excited. This is going to be something important in my life, I don't doubt it.

I need to get ink and paper to print this thing out...

Productivity

Have written quite a bit today.

Finished Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen. First time I've ever finished two chapters in a single day, let alone completed one in a day. I'm kind of drained, both physically and mentally, but I feel like I've done some good work today.

I killed someone and burned his ship, among other things. Seafear is picking up the pace and is rapidly approaching its climax. Actually, I'm on the last chapter that's action oriented, and all that's left is the denouement.

Villains

Introduced my main villain tonight, Orlando Valentine, captain of the Triton, considerably emotionless, very cool and calculated head.

As I'm writing his debut, I'm realizing that it's... very bad. Stilted. I'm not really conveying a sense of the character of Valentine, and he doesn't seem as menacing as some of the other villains in Seafear.

Granted, he's been on the page for all of 500 words, which is the barest sneeze of anything in this book (not that it's long... it's only 63,000 words, and that's getting me down...), but still, if I don't like how this chapter turns out, I'm gutting it and rewriting it. Aggressively.

Rewriting always gives me the shivers. I want to have this thing done with, but the damn thing isn't even finished yet. It's hanging over me like an agitating parental figure, constantly nagging me. When I finish it, I will be a happy camper indeed.

Characters

Characters surprise me sometimes.

I just realized that my male and female leads want to sleep with each other. I mean, they're 17 and 16, respectively, so it's no big surprise that two teenagers who spend a lot of time together -- and almost exclusively -- develop some pretty strong feelings.

But damn, that adds some undertones I need to write into the book.

Layout Change & Other Things

I've decided that, if Seafear goes anywhere in the world (and I sincerely hope it does) I'm going to keep this blog up. And I've decided that a generic layout doesn't work all that well for me right now. So I generated this free one very quickly. Yes, it looks very crappy, but I'm not so hot at layout design. Hopefully before too long I'll find someone who's actually good at technical nonsense like coding and image modifications, and they can make me a better layout than this.

In other news, Seafear moves along very... uh... swimmingly, but that's a bad pun. I'm sticking a new chapter in between Chapters 12 and 13. It's ostensibly because I want to branch off and show other points-of-view when my main band of bedraggled seafaring characters is split up, but in reality it's because I want to edge this thing's word-count to around 100,000 words.

The 100,000 words thing is sort of this test for myself; I make a big deal about reaching the 50,000 word point, but I think 100,000 words makes for something that is rather long (comparatively -- The Lord of the Rings is over 600,000 words long, I think!) and is a personal goal I've set for Seafear. The Apprentice Wizard was 85,000 words long, but there were nineteen chapters in it. Seafear has seventeen, plus a prologue... so never mind, I guess that doesn't really make a difference.

I'm not all together sold on this multiple viewpoints thing. I (very briefly) switched viewpoints in the Prologue, but that was out of necessity for the plot. I'm not entirely sure if this hypothetical Chapter 13 is entirely necessary; I'm writing it for now, but it's not in the main document. (Like that makes it non-existent or something.) If I like it, I can keep it in, but if I don't think it's working, I will excise it like a tumor and continue on my merry way through the "actual" Chapter 13.

In other other news, I'm trying to think of ways to build up a blog-reading audience for this thing. It's not something I've ever been good at, but Lord knows... If I can build up a grassroots following on the Intrawebs before Seafear (hopefully) hits shelves, then I will have some momentum going into sales. Which would be a nice feather in my cap. But I really don't know how to attract readers... so that will require some meditation.

ETA: New layout sucked. Need to find a good one.

Huh.

Well, howzabout that? I passed 50,000 words in Seafear without any sort of pomp or circumstance; nor did I, in fact, notice what had happened until I was at 50,102 words. Given that I place tremendous importance ont his milestone (for some reason, I don't quite know why) this seems funny.

I should also note that the 50,000th word in question occured around a dead body. How ominous and telling of how the pace of the book has picked up. I think that's why the writing has been so much easier lately.

Update for June

Things are going marvelously. I've written all of Chapters Nine and Ten and about 1/4th of Chapter Eleven, most of the work getting done in the past week. If I keep this frenetic pace up, I'll be done with Seafear by the end of summer. That was my goal anyway, but no matter.

Interesting things I've noticed from reading the notes I took very early on in the process (August 2, 2008): the first four characters I came up with for Seafear were Matthias Quick, Jericho Monday, Robert Beckwith, and Charlotte North. Their names have remained completely unchanged. Orlando Valentine was originally Orlando Underhill. The names of the islands have all stayed the same. The Scarlet Moon was originally the Pandora. The original title was What They Got By Knavery.

I'm trying to remember why I thought that was a good title...