The Price of Demand Edit in Progress

Just a quick update tonight. I’ve been working on the editing of The Price of Demand all day. I finished the first draft review on paper, and as suspected, there was an awful lot to fix. I used a LOT of ink crossing stuff out and writing notes!

Since then I’ve been doing the second draft pass in Scrivener, folding in the changes from the first round and doing further edits as I encounter things I missed.

If all goes well I expect to have the third draft complete tomorrow, and at that point I’ll begin converting it into an eBook as well as posting the update to the Draft Stories blog.

And now back to it…

A New Challenge

I’ve decided to take up the challenge of present tense. Ever since I wrote that first post about my brain having difficulties with present-tense works, I’ve been thinking about it a great deal, and so I’m going to go ahead and give a solid attempt at reading the first book in the Spellsong series by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

Maybe I’ll get into it; the concept is a fascinating one, which is why I was drawn to the book in the first place. I expect it’ll be tough going at first, but this past year has all been about challenging myself in various ways, and so far I’ve risen to every challenge, so I’m sure I can manage it.

In other news, my fascination with reddit.com continues to grow. There’s a fantastic community of communities over there, including several for writers that seem really interesting; particularly /r/write. Keep your fingers crossed that things will work out there. There are interesting plans afoot.

From Another Point of View

I must issue a correction to my post earlier this week entitled “From a Certain Point of View.” I incorrectly called Spellsong and various other books 2nd person present tense, when they’re actually 3rd person present tense.

It’s that present tense bit that gets to me, but I won’t go into all that again here.

Sorry for the error and resulting confusion! I am now adding point of view and tenses to my ‘must refresh memory about’ list, which continues to grow daily.

Thanks to L. E. Modesitt, Jr.  for taking the time to comment personally.

The Editing Process, Part 2

My quest to maintain an entirely digital editing process has encountered a bump in the road, and I’ve resorted to printing out stories on dead trees to go over with one of those archaic writing implements people used to use decades ago. Pens, I think they’re called. Ah well.

On the plus side, the delay that this struggle caused me has left me almost completely cut off from The Price of Demand, the story I’m currently editing. It was the first Prices story I completed back in November, and this last month that I’ve spent in zombie land has been very kind to my ability to edit the proto-steampunk material I wrote before.

Reading The Price of Demand makes me realize just how many bad sections there are, but also how much there is that I still genuinely like about it. Over all I’m kind of encouraged. I’m not ready just yet to tear the whole thing up and throw it away! This is progress.

I still think most of the editing will be done digitally, but I bow before the ability of paper to make things look really different. I’m going to have to redouble my efforts to eliminate the paper from the process though, simply because I’ve been all digital so long now that I really am not equipped with enough free desk space to work with sheets of paper comfortably.

The next big challenge in editing awaits me, and that is making sure that I don’t spend far too much time in Minecraft and/or Star Wars: The Old Republic. They’re way too tempting. 

I figure once I’ve edited each story and gotten it into an ‘improved/revised’ state, I’ll post the eBook versions to the site for download too. I haven’t done that yet because I haven’t been completely happy with them so far. I am a bit of a perfectionist though so I’ll have to restrain that impulse and just treat those eBook versions as rough works too.

From a Certain Point of View

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about perspective and how it applies to writing, what I prefer to read, what I prefer to write, what other people prefer to read.

This was mostly prompted by discussions at Goodreads in The Sword & Laser’s discussion forums. The book they’re currently reading, Rule 34 (affiliate link), is done in the rarely-used second person form.

Second person is common in game-books, which is a form of writing I enjoy, but when it comes to reading a story or novel that I’m not in some way “participating” in, I just can’t enjoy it. More than anything it’s the synchronicity of the experience. Since I’m supposedly an observer experiencing this story of someone else’s, my mind rebels at the idea that it’s in present tense, happening RIGHT NOW. How can I be reading a record of events happening as I read them?

Some people can get past this, but I can’t seem to. I’d been eager to read the Spellsong Cycle by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. but when I realized they were second-person perspective, I abandoned them before I even started.

If you’ve checked out any of the fiction I write in the Fiction Fragments or Draft Stories sections of the site, it’s pretty clear that I favor 3rd person limited for the most part, though now and then I find myself drifting into 3rd person omniscient.

Do any of you have very strong feelings about particular points of view in writing? I know I’m not alone in my feelings on 2nd person present tense, I’ve discussed it with some others. Any of you disagree? Feel free to let me know, I’m very curious about how people get around the simultaneity issue and why it’s not an issue.