and it’ll be off to Betsy!
Jane has just gotten through her read/edit of Protector. Now I go back in to do suggesteds and maybes and to smooth the flow (she found one section where I’d inserted raw outline…)
by CJ | Apr 17, 2012 | Journal | 21 comments
21 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Yay! Glad to hear it!
Just thought I’d share: Today is the boys’ sixth birthday!
http://zettepicaday.blogspot.com/
Awwww.
I keep thinking there might be something seriously wrong when I spend more time and attention on their birthday than on my own. We had shrimp last night. The boys are pleased.
I’ve got Asperger’s, so I know I’m a little “different”, but it’s always seemed to me that my birthday should be of more importance to my (late) mother than to me. After all, she took considerable effort to make it happen–I was completely oblivious.
I keep running into Aspies folks on the web, and up until a few years ago, I didn’t know about it. Cool, Paul.
Pretty boys! And happy dance for Protector.
AND apropos of nothing, I just saw a trailer for the new Dark Shadows movie staring Johnny Depp and it looks screamingly funny.
Alas, I absolutely love Depp’s movies and have seen every one, but I really, really liked the old DS, which had a different style of humor…it laughed at itself, but it also had some serious characters. Kind of like my reaction to John Carter. No fault to the actors and screenfolk.
I liked the old Dark Shadows too, which might be why this so surprised me. Its another Tim Burton affair and Helen will be playing Dr. Julia.
Oh, I hadn’t heard more about the Dark Shadows movie except there might be one. I didn’t see the original shows, though they aired sometimes on PBS here. Hmm, I’d prefer a more serious take with a little internal humor. But we’ll see what happens. I’ll see John Carter on rental or download. Knowing Johnny Depp will be in the Dark Shadows movie is a plus. That is one guy who is not afraid to try something very different.
Great news about Protector. Oops on the outline section. Thank goodness for advanced readers. I think Jane’s more than a “beta reader.”
Also, Zette, the cats look so good, clearly happy.
Dark Shadows had humor? It wasn’t on locally till 1970? I can visualize the story line where I started, and I don’t remember any humor.
Plenty of humor. While occasionally delivering you a bit of a real scare. The ONLY thing that can tempt me on this is my respect for Depp’s qualities.
Oh, Jane’s far, far more than a beta reader. She’ll say “This section is word salad,” and fix it by putting clauses in sensible order. Or — “I think you should have set this business up.” And I’ll say “WHere?” and she’ll think about it and come back later and say, “In [scene]. Let me know what you think.” And I’ll read it later and it’ll be absolutely what should have been done. So occasionally you’ll run across two or three lines at a time that she put in. Or she’ll say, “You never mentioned this guy before,” or “did you say that in the last book?” She has a far better “positional” and ‘detail’ memory than I do, and because she works only on my stuff, she remembers. Once you’ve been working on a project for half a year and have moved whole scenes backward and forward and taken things out and put others in (a book is assembled not like a chain, in logical order, but like a carpentry project, all aspects at once)—you get sooooo overloaded with those ‘this was moved from here to here’ items you may forget what the final position of various items end up being and can make some gross oopses of no-set-up. She comes in with a fresh eye and can see it as it is now, as opposed to the great shaggy thing my memory is working with, including all the possible alternate lines and even scenes I took out.
Fact is, she and I don’t always know which of us wrote what after 24 hours have elapsed.. She and I can imitate each other’s style so well. So we run a comparewrite between the two versions and that way the blue is me and the red is her. SOmetimes I’ll tweak the wording a tiny bit for character ‘voice’. Sometimes I’ll take it without a tweak because that’s exactly what I’d have done. If you guess there’s nobody else on earth I can work with like that, you’d be right.
On Chernevog, however, I wrote, she wrote, I rewrote, she rewrote, I went back through, and by the time we got through, I decided fair’s fair, and that one volume will come out under both our names.
What a wonderful, synergistic collaborative relationship! No wonder you guys are so productive. 🙂
That’s cool, the way you guys work together. I’ve started organizing and outlining with notecards, one per chapter, with color coded ink (black for POV character, current chapter position and broad action, purple for thematic elements, pink for cultural elements, green for things I’ve spent some time describing, and blue for everything else important, like new characters who’ve been intro’ed, new places intro’ed, etc.). This way, I can see what’s happened, what I’m planning to have happen, and if I go through the chapter after its written, writing down everything on the notecard, and realize I don’t have any purple, or green, or pink ink, then I know I’ve missed opportunities to weave the story together better. It’s made an IMMENSE difference in my productivity, my god.
The reason I’d resisted before was because a stack of notecards isn’t always that easy to deal with, especially if you have a small predatory mammal living with you who views a stack of paper much like a small child views a heap of freshly-raked leaves. 🙂 Also, it’s hard to see them all at once. So it finally occurred to me that I had this double-doored closet which is a huge blank space where you can’t hang pictures, and decided to create a hanging outline. (If I’m boring everyone, I apologize, feel free to skip the rest of this, but I’m twice as productive as before, and maybe even three or four times, and I know a lot of people who read this are doing their own writing, and maybe someone can use this info.)
Anyway, I used larger notecards and a hole punch and, linked the cards together using stitch markers for knitting (although coils of wire work too), then paperclipped the outline cards to the larger hanging cards, so I can rearrange and add and delete chapters just by moving the paperclipped cards, or in the case of adding two chapters early on and not wanting to move the other 30 cards, I can just unclip the stitch markers, insert another two hanging cards, and clip the new outline cards to them. I have a series of them hanging from the closet doors, using bent floral wire over the top of the doors. It’s helped so much being able to see the whole thing at once, and being able to see the progress bring made, and knowing that any card which doesn’t have any color ink on it other than black still needs work. I’d post a picture of it if I had a place to post pictures. Anyway, just an outline/organizational idea for other writers out there who might find it helpful…
Great to hear that Protector’s coming along. I’m a bit worried–soon I’ll get caught up on the “back issues” of the story and I’ll have to actually wait for new books like everybody else! 🙂
Zette – beautiful cats! We once had a black-with-one-white-spot cat who looked much like them. Now we have one humongous black cat (Svankmajer), one destructive tabby runt (Bruno), and most recently our son Anders’s cat, Sooty (a Russian Blue, we think).
Excited about Protector. I know we can’t actually read it for a long time, but then, we can always reread the series while waiting for the release of the new book, you know. Really good books always have something new to be enjoyed the second or third time around. (Or fourth or fifth . . . ) And I’m also excited to see how Peacemaker is shaping up. And what a wonderful system the two of you have, running the new book past knowledgeable but fresh eyes, to catch the glitches.
And Zette, your boys have grown from darling babies to such handsome adults.
You and Jane are so lucky to have found each other. Having a kindred spirit cum sounding board right to hand — and a handy one (in several senses) at that. Long may you both wave (and write!)
Protector – Bren has gone techie, but where on his coat is the pocket for the ruler and the pens?
LOL! But you have to be above a certain age to get that one, I think.
Thank you, Jane!
Zette – your cats are beautiful!
Thank you. And I just got a new camera, too — so even more cat pictures! I especially like this one of Wind: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zettepics/7095059857/in/photostream