Goat Notes

I finished up my most pressing donkey-work on Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland, and am now the proud possessor of:

1) A complete scene breakdown, which I'm using as a template for all high-level revision passes;

2) A story calendar, which is considerably less buggy than I'd suspected;

and

3) A digest of all the political/diplomatic matter in the story, indexed by scene.

This is so that I can plunge into the first set of revisions, namely the ones which make everybody's agendas internally coherent.  (In the story, they make sense from the perspectives of the people involved, and evolve over two or three eventful months.  In the real world, they evolved over two or three years, and the plans I started writing aren't altogether the same as the plans I brought to a conclusion.  Also, I occasionally lost track of some of the multi-decker whoppers the Duelling Diplomats are exchanging in the background.  It's all right for the reader to skim that - background, and all! - but not for it to disintegrate when the reader does look twice at it.)

And now I'm started.

This is the one job which I need to get right in order for the story to hang together and make more than impressionistic sense.  I'm giving myself a week for it, or at least for the coarse-grained corrections which are all I need to make at this stage.  Some good stuff I can't discuss without absolute spoilerificity has already emerged from the shadows in which my subconscious or my good fortune hid it.

I'm expecting to lose a big chunk of wordcount in this phase, as I remove all the repetitious speeches and diplomatic blah in which various  characters kept me up to date on what they thought they were up to through different stages of the first draft.

After this is done, the next big job will be the handling of the Big Bad, which links up with the integration of Katy Elflocks and the Great Untold Story.  Successively finer-grained stuff after that.

My sinister master plan is to have a submission-ready manuscript by Easter.

Happy New Year, all!

Due to the severe degeneration of my lifestyle during the final push to complete my first draft, I shall be devoting most of this weekend to clearup and recovery. Last night I got my first really decent sleep in more than a week, so I'll take that as a good beginning. Much or little blogging may fit into the corners.

I was going to illustrate this post, but either Dreamwidth or Picasa has stuffed up most hopelessly, and I can't be bothered to sort it out. Here's a link to the Old Masterpiece that speaks most eloquently to the state of the artist.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 200 words, by dint of skipping breakfast and hitting the bakery on the way to work.  Linking matter.

Today is officially Full of Stuff.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 590 words.  Kate and her raggle-taggle embassy array themselves for the Conference, and come to the doors of the presence-chamber.

This is the last scene tranquil enough to finish before bedtime, that I expect to get for quite a while.  Now we emerge from the brief bright calm before the storm...

Some looming visiting and travel may delay the full blow of the tempest until about Tuesday.

Crummy news from a barrel of quarters exceeded my cumulative tolerance yesterday, causing me to whistle like an irritated steam engine and spend much of yesterday tooting off the pressure in sundry manners.  Bagged three books I was waiting for in passing, still have one-and-a-half left.  I'd hoped to be fit to sleep before midnight, but nah.  Scored a measly couple of hours' doze somewhere.  Meh!

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 100 words introducing the second scenelet of the Young Duke.

About a page of a new Wood of Weyre story, very loosely based on The Famous Flower of Serving Men.  The setting is the fairy-tale world of Breaking Night Mountain, which I guess is something like Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms might be, were its creator as shifty and perverse and Dionysiac as she is conspicuously not.  One of the reasons I keep coming back to this setting, other than its being pleasingly silly and roomy and a natural for backdrop for outrageous tragicomedy, is that it stands just  on the edge of the narratives we know, whilst being so obviously born of  a historical dynamic that's bending it right away from anywhere traditional fairy-tales can keep on happening.  Or any other tales terribly familiar in our terms, either.  I kind of want to know how that's going to end up!

A new Kateverse folk-song, this one from the titanocommunist opposition: Jolly Saturday.  The devil gets good tunes everywhere.

I also began to invent my second bouncy new tune of the day; but when the lyrics began to arrive, I decided firmly but fairly that the world does not really require I'm an Asshole and That's Okay at this particular juncture, and have now successfully applied the brain bleach to most of it.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 1,460 words, and just got up to the climactic and final bit of the chapter.

Most of this is going to have to go into incluing in previous sections, be moved back into previous episodes, or just deleted and left for implication.  I can't do that in this first draft, or I'll forget half of what I was trying to imply.  The Bonfire Arc is definitely taking a turn I hadn't planned for.  That's new, eh?

Also, my nerves are piano-wires, my muscles feel fresh off the barbecue, and I am mucous as any slug.  There's a simile I shan't be working into any folksongs any time soon!

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 70 words.  Linking matter to next phase of a critical conversation.

Where's my sleep?  Want more sleep!

Want more waking hours than available, too.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 700 words.  A guard's-eye view of the Night Without Stars, and the horror of the world's meaning changing over one's head, and the strangeness of finding comfort in the sparse stony counsels of nuns.  Now comes a morning unrested and hazy, and I must home in on the Young Duke again.

Now I must see if I can catch some better sleep than usual, myself.  This week at work is going to be long and long.

My computer, such as it is, has been tediously persuaded to work with me again for the duration.

Tonight I investigate the current state of Ubuntu, just in case.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 430 words.  The Young Duke is tripping over vestal virgins at every turn, and generally feeling like a fifth wheel in his own castle.  It's worse than having the decorators in!  And then he finishes by tripping over something else I left for him to discover three or four chapters ago - little to his delight, and much to mine.  Now we can get back to some serious drama again...

I spent a deal of today in and around a castle myself: Beaumaris of the Beautiful Swamp, maze-walled and moated, now a home to ducks and swans.  Fast Eddie Longshanks never even got around to calling the decorators in there, but it's still a mighty sight to behold.  Later I scored my best steak all year in the Fat Cat at Bangor: on the rare side of medium, juicy and scrumptious, smothered in a garlic and horseradish butter which complemented it excellently, and served with shoestring fries and grilled tomatoes.  A Shipwreck IPA proved just the right accompaniment.  I record these matters that I may gloat and drool over them in future, for a steak of quality is a joy forever, and the world is insufficiently full of them.