Paksworld

The maps in the Paks books and the Gird book (reproduced a little larger in the trade paperback omnibuses) are only part of the original map of this story-world.   Somewhere there’s the first sketchy map (hole-punched and put in a 3-ring binder along with many other useful bits that would’ve made starting this set of books much easier)  and the BIG map to which I transferred things from the first sketchy map and other more limited site maps.

It’s not where it was.  It’s not near where it was.  It’s what my friend Esther called SITH…Somewhere in This House, only in this case somewhere in either this house or the other.

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I like to think I write reasonably well even on the first draft.  Oh, sure, there are occasional glitches, but the logic should be sound and the prose should flow, even if more wordily than it will later.

Fat chance.  I was just looking at a chapter, written some time ago and now about to be folded in to the first third of the new new book.    And after a page of fairly ordinary stuff (stuff happens, yes, but it’s not earth-shaking, though it might be someday),  here’s this:

The next day, they reached the house in the evening.

Oh, no!   Surely I didn’t write that!   But yes, no one else gets on this computer but me, and yes, I wrote it, and yes, it’s as bad as it reads.   It’s not quite as bad as if I’d written “The next morning, they reached the house in the evening,” but it’s close.

Headdesk.

If ever you thought perfect sentences sprang from the writer’s mind/eye/hand/fingers-on-keyboard, now you know better.

“The next evening they reached the house.”   Simple, uncomplicated, obvious in the right way, and why the !**! didn’t I write it like that the first time?  This one gets changed before I ever reach the formal revision stage.  I cannot stand to see it again.

When I looked at the one editorial request that I just could not make work, and then finally figured it out, I realized it was a perfect example for study.   My editor correctly noted that the emotional high point of a relationship’s end was not at the end…there was an anticlimax scene.

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Eagle-eyed readers have already pointed out mistakes on the Paksworld website.   If you happen to spot mistakes (where what I said on the website contradicts something in the books), please give a shout-out so I can fix it.

If it’s a mistake in the books…well, too late now.   Or mostly too late.  Correcting mistakes has to wait until the publisher thinks it’s worth doing…all the copies of that printing are sold and it’s going back again, or (more likely) a new edition.   Still, let me (or the publisher) know.

While we’re on the subject,  there are mistakes I didn’t make and can’t fix; if the covers come off or there’s a chapter of someone else’s book in the middle of mine–that’s something to write the publisher about.  You can complain to the bookstore (they will tell the publisher too) but direct contact from readers does help.