Hey everybody, what’s happening? I’m in that weird stage between not wanting to work on stuff, not wanting to watch anything, not really wanting to chat with anyone, and trying to stay up even though I am yawning like crazy. Seems to be the perfect time to write a NOVEL EDITING UPDATE!

So, where are we? A month and a half ago, I had just finished my first pass at cleaning up the vomit-draft of my debut novel, “A Distant Horn”. I spoke about how I was gonna print that sucker out by the end of July and read it line for line and mark it up with a red pen. Well, I can tell you now that I have indeed done that! So yay, brownie points for that!

Even though I’d JUST read through the whole thing, I still didn’t feel like I was done yet (ahhhh hell nah), so, like, at 4 in the morning one day, I made a self-published proof copy on Createspace (including a terrible, generic cover), and ordered it before I realized it was probably a bad idea. To help me see the story as fresh, I decided to “search and replace” all character and location names with completely new ones. If I was reading about different people, I might be able to see things a little differently. (The only name I couldn’t change was the town of “Led”, which, upon first attempts, changed EVERY “led” to whatever the hell name I had cooked up, leading to words like “stumbled” and “grumbled” to be “stumbGondor” or “grumbGondor.” My 11-pm self might have caught that, but my 4 AM self? Not a chance.)

Anyway, the proof came a couple days later (early!) and I started reading it right away. I felt like I NEEDED to have the story in my hands, in a BOOK form, in the font it’s going to be in (Garamond, please!). You can look at stuff on screens all you want, but you won’t know what it looks like until you have that shit right in front of you. And this time, while reading it, I would not do so much of a “prose” pass, but more of an overall tone/enjoyment pass. How was the flow? Was I having a good time? Was I not having a good time in some parts? Does it ever get boring? Is it polished enough to be presentable?

When studios test television shows, they’ll have people watch them with these little dials. The dials, which people move either up (for happy) or down (for not happy) throughout the episode, represent people’s enjoyment. This way, producers and studios can see exactly in real time where the audience is having a good time and where the show might be lacking. Does the quality dip here? And if it dips, then why? Well, since I seem to be a crazy freaking perfectionist (and have a lot of time), I DID THIS MYSELF by chapter. Let’s take a look!

As you can see, both the “quality of writing” and the “enjoyment” lines (I forgot which ones are which) dip around the middle before going back up to being fun again. Even though none of my friends cared about this when they’d read it, I think I might have the middle a littttttle too dark than is probably acceptable in the current story. The change in tone kind of felt like watching the goofy Batman and Robin, then switching to The Dark Knight for a second, then back to Batman and Robin. Tonally, it kind of messes things up. So I’ll be looking forward to CHANGING THAT TOO, when I go through this thing for a third time. (Note: My book is hopefully better than Batman and Robin.) But seriously, the story got a little nasty in the middle there. Maybe I put out all my editing frustrations into it, I dunno. Either way, I traveled that narrative and tonal path and know it wasn’t right, so yeah, at least I know it’s wrong.

Well this is getting pretty long, so I guess I should totally wrap it up. I could keep going on forever and ever, but you probably have your own novels to get writing (so get typing!). So yeah, I’m sort of avoiding the big cave-troll in the room here, but I think, there were, on a couple occasions, places where I said this book would be released November 1, 2013. Hmm. . .

When I saw Timothy Zahn speak about “Star Wars: Scoundrels” last year, he said the publishing houses take about nine months after a manuscript is delivered to find all the typos and do all the cleaning and get the artwork, etc, and publish the thing. I thought to myself Hey, nine months, that sounds doable! I mean, think about it, it’s a whole NINE months! But then, as I started editing, I realized that writers’ primary jobs is WRITING. And, in addition to that, they have editors and all that junk that do the crappy, typo-hunting stuff for them (at least that’s how it works, right?) So, nine months for me isn’t really enough time to finish everything because, y’know, I have a full-time day job that isn’t writing about fun goofy adventure stuff. (At least not yet :P)

I realized, that over the course of nine months, I will have spent basically 1710 hours either at work or driving to and from. That equals basically TWO MONTHS AND ELEVEN DAYS taken out of my editing schedule. I mean, sure, I didn’t really start editing until May (instead of February. . .) but I’MNOTTALKINGABOUTTHATRIGHTNOW. I guess what I’m trying to say is I won’t finish this thing in whatever 30-some-odd days are left. The way I see it, you guys are all my friends I’ve invited to a dinner party, and my novel represents the homemade burgers (or chicken or noodles) I am cooking. My responsibility, as a cook and friend, is to make sure the chicken and burgers are cooked thoroughly, lest you get all sick and hate me forever and never come over for more dinner parties. As much as a cook can’t serve you semi-pink burgers, nor can I, as an author, deliver to you a semi-cooked novel. Gotta make this sure this book “al dente”, y’know what I’m saying?

Anyway, onto pass number three (million!) Thanks for being interested and patient. The adventure will come, I promise! Let’s shoot for 2014!

-Casey

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