Juicy Picking
Posted Mon, 01/14/08
I'm pulling the chapters from "Larkin" into Collective Obsessions, which means I'm almost half-way in the process of putting the story together. (Note: "Larkin" is now known as The Twain Shall Meet in the saga). The difficulty with "Larkin" is I eliminated several characters from the original version, and now I have to make sure there are no offhand mentions of them by the remaining characters. It takes me about two or three hours per chapter – pulling it in and then editing the text line by line.
Another issue is the formatting. I originally created "Larkin" in Word Star, later converting the text into a Corel Word Perfect file. Since I'm currently working with the 2007 version of Microsoft Word, some of the finer points are a tad askew. I've found that Word 2007 even has problems with its own predecessor (Word 2003), so I suppose nothing should come as a surprise.
Though I'm slicing and dicing characters and content, I'm still up to page 564 of Collective Obsessions. Each time I add or remove text and save the document, it takes longer and longer. The same applies when I reopen the document after closing it. If I'm just about half-way, one has to assume the finished product will exceed one thousand pages. However, keep in mind that one page of text usually translates onto the printed book page as two, sometimes three pages.
One of the few agreeable aspects of editing is re-reading passages that still manage to take my breath away. Some writing days are better than others, and this has proven itself out in my work over and over again. While editing is rarely enjoyable, picking through the juicy parts is definitely a pleaser.
Tags: Collective Obsessions; Web Design/Computer Misc; Writing