One Over X News

Making Sense

One of the oddest comments that I have ever received from a reader was something like, "How can you write something so strange and it still makes sense?" I worry that my response was a little flippant. It wasn't intended to be so when I said, "Hey it just comes out that way."

What I really meant was that I write whatever comes out, as it is and very raw. I read it and re-read it several times. Then I play with it until I am satisfied. Only then do I ever let anyone else read it, say one of my daughters - sometimes my son, it just depends. I figure that if my kids like something I write then it can be bumped up a level past the strange (me), the somewhat normal (my kids) all the way up to the average person (a person that I pick at random, or someone I know from work).

Book 1 has now been through the wringer so many times between its resions and editing process prior to the first publication and this current session of revision that I almost feel sorry for the characters and the storyline. I have been very faithful. I have not changed the plot. I have deleted superfluous material. I have corrected mechanical things. I have amplified things that were not quite as clear as they should have been. I have also amplified to link a couple of things that were already there to begin with but needed a nudge to be more clearly present as an indication of what is to come in the rest of the series as well as the second series.

I am pretty excited about this version of Book 1. I was very excited about the original version as well but what did I know then about what might be possible. I was a novice to publishing. Only a couple of years before that had the whole seemingly endless process begun. I decided to take the plotlines that I had written and cobble them together into a book. It was at the behest of friends that I was even doing it. "Gee, you should put some of that together so maybe you can keep it for your kids to read."

I had never thought of being an author. I was a writer. I understood that. I had been a writer for a very long time, only there was a gap in the being a writer thing, the period that spanned a few years in the mid-1980's - the period that I now believe I lived enough to have experiences to draw upon.

The major criticism thaT I was attempting to correct with this present revision of Book 1 was perhaps the result of overzealousness. When it was in its first revsions before the initial publication I was trying to do too many things all at once. Much of the infamous 53 pages or narrative had never been a part of the original book but had been added in somewhere toward the end of the writing process and those pages were always a problem. They were the most troublesome text and probably they were the root cause of the delays in the publishing of the first book. I remember vividly how many times those pages were worked and reworked. As a lesson I learned that when in doubt throw it out, as the addage goes.

There might be a few things lingering and lurking in the background and maybe I will pick them up in further edits. So far, this revision is pretty tight, though.

I plan to mail out hard copies of the printed manuscript to Ela'na and maybe another friend of mine who likes sci-fi, a more recent friend that has done nothing more than read some of this blog. I may have a couple of other people read it too, just for the sake of finding things that I overlook. It makes sense to me, ya know. Then again so did the original book.

Realistically, if this version is ever to reach the shelves as a commercial product, it may be a year away if not more. I am pretty-much satisfied with it at this point. I doubt I will do anything like this with Book 2 and Book 3 was done and ready for print a year ago. Book 1 was the issue that I felt I had to work on. I have largely settled that now.

Back to the reading. Keep the faith and be good to one another.

E

posted by Unknown @ 9:34 PM