urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:seanan_mcguire The Journal of Seanan McGuire Seanan McGuire 2009-05-07T17:52:42Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:seanan_mcguire:106515 2009-05-07T17:52:42Z 2009-05-07T17:52:42Z Counting Crows, "Rain King." Okay, follow the timeline with me here for a moment. On July 2nd, 2008, I started a major revision of <i>Late Eclipses of the Sun</i>, 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.<br /><br />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:<br /><br />Pages, 389.<br />Words, 107,089.<br />Chapters, thirty-five.<br />Cans of DDP, beyond counting.<br /><br />Please compare these to the book stats before I started my revision:<br /><br />Pages, 417.<br />Words, 115,310.<br />Chapters, thirty-six.<br /><br />Oh, and did I mention that&mdash;at one point during the revision process&mdash;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 <i>Late Eclipses</i> and skipping that whole "sun" thing entirely.<br /><br />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 <i>The Brightest Fell</i>, aka, "Toby Daye, book five," aka, "Seanan, honey, can we please wait for <i>Rosemary and Rue</i> to come out before you finish the second set of three?"<br /><br />In conclusion...<br /><br />...DINO DANCE PARTY!