Paksworld

So my agent and I had a good long talk on the phone last Friday, and yes, NewBook IS a book, and IS publishable, BUT (there’s always a BUT.  Always, from every level of alpha reader, beta reader, agent, and editor)  there are Things To Be Fixed.

Which I’m working on.  Started early Saturday morning.  Everything he said made sense to me (another change since late May of this year is that I can “get” what the “could be better if” is about again.)   So the fixes are a matter of finding the places to put the fixes in the right place, in the right words, and remove the less-right words in a way that leaves everything looking like it grew there in the first place.  That’s never as simple as it sounds (just take out the wrong words, put in the right ones)  because the simple form means cut-and-patch…and the new “better” words often clash in some way with nearby words (sentences, phrases, tone, prosody, etc.) that also need some work to make the patches truly invisible.  But it’s doable; it just takes (always) more time than I hope.  I’ve already made considerable progress.

Meanwhile, though, NewBookII is having to sit on the inactive line, and it’s about as patient as I’ve been when an earlier delay has meant the passenger train I was on had to be held on a siding so a series of long, slow freight went by.   (We had had a collision with an idiot work truck parked on the tracks; it damaged the locomotive’s cowling–it was dragging on the tracks–so we had to crawl slowly to a siding where a welder could come cut it off.  No fault of Amtrak, it was the company that owned the rails’ work truck that had parked there when the train was due to come whizzing through at full speed.  SNARL.)  Anyway, NewBook is being grumpy and trying to push its words into my “fix this” tool, and that it not really a help at all.

All thanks to my percipient agent for pointing out what I think were the two biggest things that needed fixing, one of which is now completely done, and the other one far ahead (but the small fixes in between are necessary to set up the big later fix, so it’s not sitting there outlined in fluorescent orange screaming “Look at me!  I’m where the dead story bit was!” at the reader.)   I’m now eyeing the first POV section of Gwennothlin Marrakai, whom some of you will remember as one of Dorrin’s squires, last seen about to enter the Bells school for young knights.   She’s a knight now.  But the first POV section didn’t please my agent and what seemed to me a reasonable and seamless transition didn’t work for him.  So I’m looking at home to make it obvious that it should be there.  And one thing is to put an obvious link to her brother, who has (just previously) been the most vivid of characters.

So the morning’s work goes on and I will get back to it, now, and you, later.