Paksworld

I can’t remember if this question has been asked here, but it comes up in other venues, at least, and I’m in the mood to write a little about it so…”Do writers really need a big vocabulary?”

That’s kind of like asking a world-renowned chef if she really needs all those spices, herbs,  ingredients, all those pots and pans and tools.

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What you send to Agent or Editor varies with the kind of book, but I’m now working on the not-book parts of the submission package.   NewEditors who are assigned in the middle and latter parts of a group of books–especially something as complicated as the Paksworld books–usually appreciate something that will get them up to speed quicker than just reading the whole (in this case eight previous) books.   Copyeditors always like to have a list of unique character names, words, etc.   And that’s what I’m doing now, taking a break from the wildlife management report for a few hours to work on this.

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Chapter numbers.   Chapter numbers don’t go on until I’m sure all the chapters are there, in the right order (OK, MOSTLY sure.)    Before that, chapters have a title, such as “Chapter: Kieri & Elves Talk History” (not actual title.)  That way I can use a search on “Chapter” to find the beginnings of chapters, and the title tells me if I have the one I want.  Chapter numbers change during the writing, as I may be off-chronology.    Chapters are numbered now, all forty-one of them.

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If you have over a million words of fiction set in the same world, you’re very likely going to have a lot of characters and those characters need names.   The names have to fit the world, and each other.  In real life, many people may have the same name (which is how the innocent get blamed for crimes they didn’t commit): there are dozens of Elizabeth Moons across the country, with at least one in most states and at least nine in Texas.   But in a book (as I discovered in my first one, when I didn’t know better) readers expect one name per character and one character per name.   They need those names to be easily pronounced (and “easily” varies with the reader) and distinctive.

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First a thank-you to y’all for your patience.    It has been a…um…very busy time here at the old homestead.  Tonight is the night of the Messiah performance, and that will make four days in a row of driving to the city for 3+ hours of singing (and on Sunday I drove in early to sing the first service at church, then drove home to do the other stuff.)

Your reward for the patience is a snippet, after a short review of revision progress.   I have finally (FINALLY) got important two important events tied in neatly with all their threads connected.    As I near the end of a book, everything has more and more threads hanging off it (it’s connected to this, that, and the other in various ways–foreshadowings that may go back several books,  links to contemporaneous happenings, hooks set that will turn out later to be significant, etc.    The next to last book in a group is even more rife with threads for every major event, internal and external.   And every one of those little stinkers needs to be woven in, as invisibly as possible, so the pattern is unbroken.    But enough about the work in progress:  Herewith a snippet from the work to come.

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I am deep in chronology now, maybe halfway through, and discovering that I have duplicated some events (though the way the scenes are written varies a lot) and completely left out some very important ones.  Last night’s work session was on one such scene (a plot-mover for sure.)    Getting the others into even rough order helps a lot in seeing overlaps, duplicates, and gaps.

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Rotten no-good cold or no rotten no-good cold, I still should finish (or nearly finish) the main draft of the new book by Oct 1, and within a week of that should have it roughly in order.  (It’s not now, because of the various medical interruptions–to keep going, I wrote in whatever part of the story cooperated that day, so it’s added branches to its trunk fairly randomly. )

So:   I will need some alpha readers who are strong on the structural side (the nit-picking comes later.)  The rough sort I’ll do to get this out to people may not be accurate.     Given my aging memory, I can’t recall who, exactly, was on the last couple of alpha-reader lists (which I’ve misplaced, you see…DUH) so if you want to trudge through 160,000 (roughly) words of  very unfinished manuscript setting a trail for revision to follow, contact me by email.   There will be the usual “makes the publisher happy” agreements not to reveal anything prematurely to deal with.

Thanks, and I’m off to get from 156,300 to 160,000+ as fast as I can.

In real life as in fiction,  interest picks up when things go wrong.   We enjoy (and enjoy reading a little about) when things go right…the travelers are gliding along a smooth lake, surrounded by beautiful scenery, eating delicious food, enjoying the company of delightful companions, but after awhile it feels/reads like an ad from a tour company.   Though a few pages of this can build suspense (because surely something will go wrong) too much is soon too much.   We think we want that life, but many of us–when things are going too well–start rocking our own boats.  If it’s going well, why not try this…or that…?

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Another batch of chocolate chip cookies and Saint Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”)   pulled me out of the slump and past the next milestone:  130,000 words.    The problems aren’t all solved, but I squeezed out a nearly shut door and went off somewhere with Kieri to look at progress along the river.

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Book faced me today with two of the most daunting scenes in the series…not the kind that twist your emotional core into a wad and then set it on fire, but technically daunting as in “How the dickens do I even approach writing this?”

One answer is “First make chocolate chip cookies and pick your music.”

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