Revision progress.

[mrissa]

I have finished the Sampo read-through. The last hundred pages went extremely quickly: it's very fast to draw long slashes through pages. I have never gotten a book this wrong before in my life.

Umm. This is not true. The first two books I wrote were beyond salvaging, when I was 11 and 14 respectively. This one is (she said modestly) a pretty good book for such a screwed-up book.

And I know how to fix it. I have copious, copious notes for how to fix it, many of which are mostly typing at this point. And -- ooh, you're gonna love this, this is a great innovation in a book -- the ending? Will come roughly when the book stops. And not, like, a hundred pages before the book stops. (See? See how clever I am? Aren't you glad I'm on your friendslist, except, of course, if I'm not?) I mean, I'm all for denouement, but I think a ten-page epilogue will do just fine for denouement. There were some good scenes cut. They were just good scenes for a book I'm not writing and never intend to write.

(It's a dangerous thing for me to talk about books I'm never going to write, because I've already written at least two of them: these two. But I really mean it: I'm not writing a bildungsroman for Ansa Nikkanen's son.)

Also the revised Sampo will feature more sex and violence. So yay for that, too.

I'm a little alarmed that I'm still in the, "No, this is good, I can work with this!" stage. I think I should be at the, "Oh, shit, I'm going to live under my desk, and should anyone find me there I will claim to be a secretary named Kathy and not a writer named Marissa at all" stage. But there's still plenty of time for first-readers to convince me of the utter suckage when I send it to them, so that, at least, is cheering.

Comments

[shawn-scarber.livejournal.com]

the ending? Will come roughly when the book stops. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I hate a book that ends in the middle. Call me traditional, but they should end at the end.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

*BLUSHCOUGH*

Actually the book before this one is a bit like that. It has an ending. I'm even convinced that that ending resolves some things. But it heads pretty directly into this book.

But it is only a duology, not a trilogy. A duology with a half-finished stand-alone related work. But still not a trilogy.

[shawn-scarber.livejournal.com]

Ah, well see, I see a series as something different. It just seems I've been reading more stand alone books lately that end about 80k into the novel, but the thing doesn't shut up until it reaches 120k. To me, that just doesn't work. But I do understand that if you're doing a series you have to leave a few threads open.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have heard tell that editors are more open to short books than they were for awhile. I don't know if that's true, since I can name good short books published in the dry spell and good long books being published now. But I have heard tell. So maybe the extra 40K will get axed in those books. One can hope.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

And then there's my theory, which is stop twenty pages before the book ends. :P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I wasn't going to bring it up, but. BUT.

AHEM!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

And -- ooh, you're gonna love this, this is a great innovation in a book -- the ending? Will come roughly when the book stops. And not, like, a hundred pages before the book stops.

I have this theory that the ideal point for an ending is when everything subsequent becomes inevitable, and that one shouldn't actually need to do the working out from that point on, and while I really like books that do that, I seem to be consitutionally incapable of writing them. Indeed, if the current WiP escapes without an epilogue from a completely different POV, that will be a first out of four novel-length things I have finished. Any world complicated enough to tell a novel-length story in it, for me, seems also to demand to have things show up along the way that need to be in but that can't go in protagonist POV, and that want to do Necker-cube reversals with what the reader thinks they know.

[ See also Use of Weapons, which as Iain Banks tells it was rescued from obscurity by Ken MacLeod's brilliant suggestion to put the climax at the end. ]

Also the revised Sampo will feature more sex and violence. So yay for that, too.

I'm all in favour of more sex. In novels, too.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It still will not be a book with lots of sex. But still, more.

markgritter reports that his mother used to complain that TV had too much violence and not enough sex.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Yes--in Grosse Pointe Blank for example, a TV kills someone. But does a TV get any lovin'? Heck no.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There are at least two moments in The SImpsons when a TV gets cuddled.