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truepennyYesterday, my editor emailed me her editorial notes on Corambis. I need to sit down with my inner twelve year old, I think, and explain that, no, the edit letter is never going to be an affirmation that I am a beautiful, unique, talented, and sparkly snowflake. Especially the edit letter on something I already knew was severely flawed.
But it was still kind of ouch-like, reading her comments and seeing from them just how far the book I turned in was from the book I want it to be.
(I am having a really hard time not devolving into LOLcat:
I HAS EDIT LETTER
DO NOT WANT
Because not only is that factual, it also sums up pretty nicely the emotional register of my response. :P )
In the broadest terms, what's wrong with the book is two things:
1. The first half is not commensurate with the second half. It's like the front half of a pantomime horse yoked to the back half of a mortar. (No, THIS kind of mortar.)
2. As with The Mirador, the first time through this story I was patently thinking with my genre conventions, and that is wrong wrong wrong.
Oh, and one more:
3. There's a scene in the middle which is psychologically true, and which has been bumping around in my head since I started working on this sprawling monster of a story (I don't really see the four books of the series as four separate stories; that's why I can say decisively that book four is the last book, because I've known the arc, in vague and frequently obfuscated forms, all along), but which I did a fairly rotten job of making narratively inevitable. And I somehow forgot to think about aftermath and consequences and all the stuff that makes a scene part of a story instead of an isolated event.
In even broader terms, the book is a quagmire.
Unless I crack and beg for an extension, which will involve throwing off the production schedule, I have to have the damn thing cleaned up, complete with shining canals and habitats for rare species of waterfowl, by December first.
I may be a little tense and irritable for the foreseeable future.
Just so y'all know.
But it was still kind of ouch-like, reading her comments and seeing from them just how far the book I turned in was from the book I want it to be.
(I am having a really hard time not devolving into LOLcat:
I HAS EDIT LETTER
DO NOT WANT
Because not only is that factual, it also sums up pretty nicely the emotional register of my response. :P )
In the broadest terms, what's wrong with the book is two things:
1. The first half is not commensurate with the second half. It's like the front half of a pantomime horse yoked to the back half of a mortar. (No, THIS kind of mortar.)
2. As with The Mirador, the first time through this story I was patently thinking with my genre conventions, and that is wrong wrong wrong.
Oh, and one more:
3. There's a scene in the middle which is psychologically true, and which has been bumping around in my head since I started working on this sprawling monster of a story (I don't really see the four books of the series as four separate stories; that's why I can say decisively that book four is the last book, because I've known the arc, in vague and frequently obfuscated forms, all along), but which I did a fairly rotten job of making narratively inevitable. And I somehow forgot to think about aftermath and consequences and all the stuff that makes a scene part of a story instead of an isolated event.
In even broader terms, the book is a quagmire.
Unless I crack and beg for an extension, which will involve throwing off the production schedule, I have to have the damn thing cleaned up, complete with shining canals and habitats for rare species of waterfowl, by December first.
I may be a little tense and irritable for the foreseeable future.
Just so y'all know.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 10:26 pm (UTC)Dude. I so TOTALLY know that feeling. I was just working on a round of revisions yesterday and bemoaning the fact that I was not a shining sparkly unique snowflake.
I recommend chocolate. Sometimes a Vosges bar or a Truffle Pig is the only thing that saves all living beings in my immediate vicinity from the death-ray triggered by edit letter.
The hell of it is, I know my editors are all Good Peeps and want to make the story better. I'm just sensitive as hell and my inner 12-year-old gets involved...and I've learned to give an extra week before I send ANY response. Because, you know, the kneejerk snarkiness just does not need to be flung in my hapless editor's lap. *grin*
Still, I recommend chocolate.