Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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Eclipsing the obvious with the oblivious, daily.

Okay, follow the timeline with me here for a moment. On July 2nd, 2008, I started a major revision of Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, "Toby Daye, book four." On December 15th, 2008, I gave it to my agent for review...and on January 15th of this year I started a second major revision, because the book had some issues, and those issues could only be solved through the application of more machete. Much, much more machete.

Last night, on the plane somewhere between Michigan and California, I typed "the end" once more, closed the file, and called it good. The current book stats:

Pages, 389.
Words, 107,089.
Chapters, thirty-five.
Cans of DDP, beyond counting.

Please compare these to the book stats before I started my revision:

Pages, 417.
Words, 115,310.
Chapters, thirty-six.

Oh, and did I mention that—at one point during the revision process—the book managed to swell to a high-water mark of approximately 118k? Yeah. This was a book in need of some serious surgery, and now that the surgery has been performed, I can look at the manuscript and not feel like a match would improve it immensely. (I have a real love/hate relationship with my work. I love it while I'm creating it. I love it six months after it's finished. Immediately after it's finished, I would really love to set it on fire.) At some point during the revision, even the book's name got tighter, becoming Late Eclipses and skipping that whole "sun" thing entirely.

So now I'm tossing my innocent manuscript into the wolverine pit with my hungrily slavering initial readers, who will gut it and play hackysack with its kidneys for a little while; then I'll send it off to The Agent, and resume prodding at The Brightest Fell, aka, "Toby Daye, book five," aka, "Seanan, honey, can we please wait for Rosemary and Rue to come out before you finish the second set of three?"

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!
Tags: dino dance party, editing, good things, late eclipses, one salt sea, proofreading, rosemary and rue, writing
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  • 18 comments
Congratulations.
I feel like I've been beaten with sticks.
I know the feeling!
Woohoo! Go you!
Glee.
Congratulations, and pie!
Mmm, pie.
*shakes head*

I take a break from writing fanfic featuring Grimlock to surf a few flist pages, turn on music to websurf to, and here you are saying "DINO DANCE PARTY!" just as Caramelldansen came up.

So, imagery. Liek. Whoa.

(Srsly, thank you. NOTHING banishes final exams faster than the mental image of a 35-foot-tall alien robot who turns into a T-rex shaking his rear end to silly electronica.)
I control reality again! Yay for me!
Yaaaaay!!
*dance*
I love YouTube. I searched on "dinosaur dance" and got 1,720 hits, including this one:


WIN.
Hey, I _want_ you to get back to TBF :)

This is true; you do.
It's like a club. But not the kind you hit people with.
Fantastic! I love hearing about you & your revision machete. It makes me :-D
Whack whack whack bleed cry whack whack whack. Glee.