Paksworld

First: Happy Canada Day to you Canadians.

Second:   This may make you laugh.  It did me.   Critical scene–critical in terms of reader spatial orientation as well as reader “what’s happening” orientation.

And I got both direction (east v. west) and possibility wrong.   It was a plot bomb, and I was writing as fast as I could, but still!  East is east and west is west and if you go the wrong way you end up in the wrong place.   And one little three-letter word (“not”)  makes a huge difference.

It’s a reminder to me that every single word of the (now 165,000+ words has to be checked and rechecked and re-rechecked.  Not only could I get them wrong in the first place (UGH!) but every change I make affects everything around it (and often things several chapters away.)  That fix was easy, this morning–oops, reversed directions, left out a word–but even so the new reading changed the sound of the sentences they were  in and and required a “voice check” to see if there were now unwanted sound-things (rhymes, assonance, echoes,  etc.   Should be intentional,  if there.)

July has started.   There’s rain within fifty miles of us but no rain here.  The clouds, however, are keeping us below 100F, and we can smell dampness on the wind.  That’s a goodness.

I have necessary POV sections (important to the overall story arc, definitely belong) that are not reading smoothly where they are.  Can’t quite figure out where to put them, either.   I suspect this means I need to write some additional connective tissue.   That’s for the next pass.  I have one POV section that may or may not end up in the book:  the character is a major plot-mover but distant right now (acting through others, with whom one or more main characters come in contact.)  I needed to do the POV section to understand the character’s motivation, but it may not be necessary for readers in this book.  It’s a Richelieu situation–you don’t see a lot of him in The Three Musketeers but he generates plot.

I think I’ll stop for lunch.  Then it’s back to work.