And this means that I should have done my “It’s Friday!” post yesterday. But I was so excited about the green comet, and envious of all you Northern Hemisphere folk who can just go outside in the dark pre-dawn and see it for yourselves (maybe), that I decided to post about that instead.<\/p>\n
So now it’s Saturday and so I’m going to tell you about “What I’m Working On” and “What I’m Reading” today, instead. Easy!<\/p>\n
What I’m Working On: Books & Blogs, Pretty Much! Yesterday, after I posted about the green comet, I worked on Gathering<\/em><\/strong> (The Wall of Night Series, Book Two<\/strong><\/a>), where I am still revising Part 2. “Still” because a lot of this past week has been taken up with getting this blog up and running\u2014the posting part is not too difficult (I am a writer, after all) but the techie background stuff of getting the blog page to look as much like my website as possible, and to link through to the website in a seamless way, has required extra help.<\/p>\n This help has come in two parts. Firstly in the form of my friend Fitz<\/strong><\/a> who designed my Helen Lowe<\/em><\/strong><\/a> and Thornspell<\/em><\/strong> <\/a>websites and did a re-design so it would fit in with the blog page look. The second major assist has been from another good friend, Joff<\/strong><\/a>, who is very much a webbie guy and got in there and “re-engineered” the blog theme to fit my needs and get the website marry-up running smoothly. And by the way, answered all my “blogs-for-dummies” questions with great patience and good humour\u2014because sadly, although I would not describe myself as a technophobe, (I can definitely learn “how to”, but\u2014) it’s not really my “thing”, so the learning curve is always pretty steep. But I think we’re getting there!<\/p>\n Joff<\/a> <\/strong>and\u00a0Fitz<\/strong> <\/a>also have their own websites\/blogs, so if you want to know more just click on their names and check them out. And if you leave a comment, tell them I said to say “hi”.<\/p>\n Now, back to revising Part 2 of Gathering.<\/em><\/strong> Yesterday I got through 17 pages, which may not sound like\u00a0 a lot, but often is. This is because revision is not necessarily a strictly linear process. A big part of revision is continuity, so often you have to go back and check what a character said or did before (or even who, exactly, said or did what), and “before” can be 5, 6, even 10 chapters back. Frequently I then have to make changes in both places to keep things in synch\u2014and also work my way ‘forward’ to where I ended up, making sure that the changes stay good all the way through.<\/p>\n There can be a lot of these sorts of considerations when you’re revising a first draft, because with the first draft you’re always working with material that was “just written”\u2014where the most important thing is just getting the ideas and the characters and the flow of the story down there on the paper (ok, e-paper, but you get my drift) . And it’s fun and it’s wild and it’s exciting, but yeah, sometimes there can be a little bit of mopping up to do, both with the sequencing of the action\u2014not just what<\/em> happens, but where<\/em> it happens, and how<\/em>\u2014but also with the characters. Very often the way I originally envisage a character and start writing them will change and evolve in response to the action of the story and the other characters they encounter, so I also need to go back and ensure that the character remains consistently the same person throughout.<\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong, characters can change and they definitely do, but there has to be a rationale for that change in the story, an evolution that the reader can understand and “buy” (in my “book” anyway). In fact, you could probably say that continuity is one of the things I pay a lot of attention to in my writing . Pace is really important, too, and something I also pay pretty close attention to right from the get-go.<\/p>\n I think that’s enough for one post, so I’ll leave\u00a0 “what I’m reading”\u2014squeezing in between the writing and the blogging!\u2014for tomorrow’s post. And hey\u2014enjoy your weekends. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And this means that I should have done my “It’s Friday!” post yesterday. But I was so excited about the green comet, and envious of all you Northern Hemisphere folk who can just go outside in the dark pre-dawn and see it for yourselves (maybe), that I decided to post about that instead. 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