Retreat, Day 20

So my promise to myself is that the sequel to Beasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, will be DONE by November 14th, which is my birthday, and which I plan to spend with Skyrim and a nice sativa (legal here in the marvelous land of WA) and not one ounce of work throughout the day as a thank you to me for working my butt off the last six weeks and getting this DONE.

The book is scheduled to be released at Emerald City Comicon next year, so you may see why the time pressure has stepped up in intensity. I told myself I’d get it done this year, and I have, along with a whole bunch of stories, not one but two collections, the update of Creating an Online Presence for Writers, a bajillion trips, and opening the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, including cool new classes from Rachel Swirsky and Juliette Wade, so I feel darn good about how much I got accomplished this year despite SFWA’s demanding maw chewing up my time on a consistent basis.

I thought, however, it would be useful perhaps for people grappling with novels to see what the last bits of work involve. I’ve been incorporating edits from the hardcopy manuscript but still have lots and lots of comments in the e-copy to address. In the process of adding those, I was able to look at the manuscript from a high-enough level that I could sort out all the chronology (oh dear GODDESS please let that statement be true, because that’s been the biggest pain in the rear so far) and make sure that everything made sense, that storylines were resolved, and that all the hidden plotlines got bubbled up in a meaningful way.

I’m adding in a few stray scenes that got dropped somehow, and then I’ll do the following passes (this is taken from the TODO list currently hovering at the beginning of the manuscript in Scrivener).

I’ll get through as many of these today as I can, but at some point I’ll have to print it out, because I want to take it on the road with me. I’m headed to a conference on nonprofit storytelling (ha) on Wednesday and back on the 13th, which is a complication I really wish I hadn’t introduced into my life, along with a class I’m teaching on the 12th (ditto the regret for the timing, but it’ll be a fun class), which is one reason I deserve a little Skyrim next Monday.

Anyway, here’s the todo list that I’ve been making as I went through and added my edits in:

Do a search on:
“¢ One of, not for the first, little, square
“¢ Penny-wides (penny)
“¢ Swam, abandon, tilt
(These are words I’ve noticed I use a lot, and I want to make sure they’re not over-used or consistent.)

Points that need to be checked or addressed:
Position of Temples on Beasts
Is Lucy set up as a name?
Are there too many duplicate things, like Lucy getting dismissed twice, multiple fights with Eloquence, etc? Outline events and examine.

Echoes:
Terra-cotta trade god dolls
Riot and Duke’s Occasion

Passes that need to be made:
“¢ Titles and capitalization
“¢ Read through each person’s story and map out times against BoT
“¢ Mapping pass – streets align
“¢ Trade God pass, check all the names against morphology
“¢ Names – consistent Bannister/Faustino, Serafina/whatserface, Marta/Ruhua, all of Elo/Obed’s sisters
“¢ Thought patterns (x 4)
“¢ (spoiler removed) clues
“¢ Mother references from Elo and Obed
“¢ Motivation for Lucy’s (spoiler removed)
“¢ Passes on significant locations: the stables, Sebastiano’s bedroom, Adelina’s, College of Mages, Great Hive chamber, the press, Adelina’s office, Letha’s stillroom, Silvercloth breakfast room, Murga’s tent
“¢ Possible redundancies: Adelina’s hiding of the press, Dryad forest and furnace, orange paper, election explanation, Sphinx

With the passes, I’m going through looking at a specific aspect, usually. For example, looking at each time a particular location occurs in order to make sure there are no contradictions and that the successive iterations build on each other rather than being redundant. That was the biggest flaw (IMO) of Beasts’s multiple drafts, a legacy of how many agents and editors wanted changes to the point where the book got rewritten a dozen times.

So we’ll see. I think this is a better book than the first one, which is reassuring, but there is always that perhaps I am deluding myself and this is just a manuscript with all work and no play makes Cat a dull girl repeated over and over again feeling lurking in the back of my head when I get to this stage.

Now, back to work.

#sfwapro

Today’s wordcount:5006
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 99942
Total word count for the week: 10014
Total word count for this retreat: 27091
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, story “Days of Sweetness, Days of Want”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes
According to Fitbit, 11646 steps, 85 flights of stairs, 5.26 miles

From Hearts of Tabat:

The journey upward was full of splinters and soot, but both girls made it. They wandered through the rooms here, which were lower-ceilinged but just as once richly appointed as the downstairs had been. Here too, though, looters had stripped away most of the valuable things other than the built in furniture and even there, the shelves that had once held drawers gaped openly. Bales of paper, blackened on the outside, fell aside at the touch to reveal white internals, blank and ready for words that would never come.

There were two separate suites, both facing out over Printers Row, and in one, rather than looting, someone had smashed: a mass of crockery, and a number of terra-cotta house dolls, every Trade God in the house, it seemed. Revelation picked through the fragments, taking out the faces where she could find them, accumulating them into a little heap of smiles and eyes and pointed noses.

“What are you doing?” Grace said irritably. “Those aren’t worth anything.”

Revelation bit her lip and kept down on her knees, sorting through the fragments. She thought to herself, they have value because I want them, even if someone else might think they’re worthless. Anger smoldered in her like a damp match.

“Do you think they’ll have some power, because they’re Trade Gods?” Grace persisted. “That’s foolish. Only the moons are real.”

“I know that,” Revelation said. “I’m not a heretic.”

“Then why are you sorting those out? Do you think you can put one back together?”

Revelation shook her head. Grace pulled at her shoulder. Reluctantly, she swept the faces she had found, two handfuls worth, into her pockets and let Grace move her along.

The fire’s touch had manifested in every room, charring walls, blackening fabrics. It smelled overwhelmingly of burned things, which was not a smell that Revelation had considered unpleasant before this day, but now pressed at her nose until she found herself dipping her face into her shoulder, trying to breathe through the fabric of her cloak. Grace seemed unaffected by the smell, moving quickly to anything she thought might yield some value, and forcing her gleanings on Revelation, whose load grew heavier and heavier as they sorted through the rooms: a brass lantern; half a picture frame, the edges gilded; a small glass jar full of an unknown white paste; a handful of yellowy-gold feathers, so bright that she thought they must be painted at first.

They both froze when they heard the noise from below.