Friday, August 08, 2008
The Sun Also Revises
I revised at lunchtime in the car (because the day job has no lunch room and no conference rooms) then I came home, did stuff that needed to get done, whisked the son off to soccer practice and sat in the car and revised some more. Then I did more stuff that had to get done and now I'm back to revisions as soon as I post this. Well, just checking that I didn't create any new messes and cleaning up anything else I find.
SighI'm exhausted because of
Acheron and I have to get up at 6:30 or so because my son has a soccer tournament this weekend. Two games Saturday one Sunday, and then, depending on the outcome, possibly a championship game.
Off to revise.
Labels: His Wicked Witch, Revisions
(3) comments
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Off to RWA!
I'm pretty much packed except for all the important stuff I forgot. Now just last minute chores so things aren't gross when I get back on Sunday.
I'm close but no cigar to being done with revisions for
His Wicked Witch. I'm taking a print out with me to RWA for a final read through for continuity and egregious errors.
Note to self: turn on the printer. Although
My Wicked Enemy isn't quite officially out, I know it's shipping from Amazon and that it's available in stores now. So, w00t!! Go
get your copy now!One more RWA-related comment then I'm off to finish getting ready:
It's in San Francisco. In July. Of course it's cold!!I'll be blogging and twittering at the conference so see you on line!
Labels: His Wicked Witch, My Wicked Enemy, Revisions, RWA Nationals
(0) comments
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Quickie Update
I'm sitting here at Starbucks doing day job work. Right now files are transferring and I can't do anything until that's done. So here I am!
I've finished the copyedits for
Scandal. I just have to make copies of the MS then get it into the mail. Now I'm starting in on the revisions for
His Wicked WitchAll done with the day job stuff... Bye!
Labels: copyediting, His Wicked Witch, Revisions, Scandal
(1) comments
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Checking in - Things is Crazy Here
Just a quick post. As many of you probably know,
RWA has its national conference in San Francisco July 30 to August 2. Which is soon. Really soon. (Yay!)
I have the copyedits for Scandal (due date: July 31) Snort. Real drop dead last day: July 28, because I head down there the 29th since the Beau Monde Conference is the 30th.
Today I got the revision letter for
His Wicked Witch or whatever it ends up being called.
Argh! I've only given it a quick glance to make sure I wasn't being asked to write a completely different book. No. Very good, there!
And, of course there's the WIP and today I didn't get a chance to work during lunch because I worked through lunch which means 0 words today. Panic is setting in.
Right so I'm really busy and may not be blogging too much between now and July 29 when I will be blogging and twittering the conference. Hopefully on my iPhone...
For now, I'll be twittering more reliably than blogging because that's easier, shorter and faster than blogging. Also you can't get carried away and keep writing some big old longer than you intended post.
In Carolyn's perfect world copyedits and revisions are done by July 28.
Wish me luck.
Follow me on TwitterLabels: copyediting, His Wicked Witch, Revisions, RWA Nationals, The List
(3) comments
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Done Gone! Or do I mean Doggone?
Magellan's Witch is off to my editor. I'm in a state of
whatever right now. Just to give you-all a flavor of what it's been like, yesterday I decided that I should listen to the nagging voice that kept saying
Carolyn, why do all the villains have Latino names? Answer? Because the names sounded cool. Santiago and Magellan. Totally cool names. But, still, that's one of those things that could be open to bad interpretations. So I decided to change one of my antagonists from Brazilian to Danish. This meant I could make my villain, Magellan, Brazilian! Brilliant! I said to myself. Now all the Portuguese lines can go to him. But that also meant I needed a Danish name.
Lucky me, my sister-in-law is Danish. So I called her up and said, hey, Christina, I need some cool Danish names. Anyone who's been put on the spot before can guess what happened. She could hardly remember her own name let alone Danish names for men. But my brother got on the internet and we got a quick list put together with Christina's help. Her brother, it turns out, had the absolute perfect name -- Peter Nikalaj. I would have used just Nikalaj, but I couldn't because my hero is Nikodemus. Rats!! I really liked Rasmus, but Magellan's first name is Ragos, so that was out. And since I have some quite unusual names, I needed a Danish name that seemed Danish without being TOO Danish. Hans, for example was out. I tried Henrik. Yuk. Did not work. Then I tried Jakob, but cool though it was, it didn't look right on the pages. So then I tried Iver and that stuck all the way until about two hours ago when I decided my Danish mage had to be Rasmus, and therefore Magellan was getting a new first name. He got Alvaro. So then when I did the search and replace for
Iver 244 replacements. Wow, I thought. I had no idea I mentioned him so often. Um. No. Actually, I didn't. I merely neglected to select
Whole Word when I did the replacement which meant for a time words like
shiver became
shRasmus. Oops. And I didn't even realize it at first.
Yikes!But it wasn't too late and an undo fixed that and Iver became Rasmus and shRasmus went back to shiver. Then I had to reassign the Portuguese lines, only three or four, to Magellan and change my descriptions of Santiago to reflect that he was now Rasmus, the Danish mage. He went from black hair to white-blond hair. And that meant that my lady-fiend, Fen, who had white-blonde hair became a red-head, and that also meant, as it turned out, that her bra became red instead of black. Who knew?
And, also last night as I was falling asleep feeling smug about being done and needing only to transfer my very last edits (right) that damned little voice said,
Carolyn, how come you're not listening when I tell you that you need to take Iskander out of Chapters 27-29 and put in your hero?Rats. F-you little voice!
So today I also did that, but it was a really fast change and much easier, actually, than deciding on a Danish name for the mage formerly known as Santiago. But that change totally rocked. So then I spell checked everything, and made sure I didn't have any pages with one word on them or blank and I fought the good fight with Word. Have I maybe mentioned before how much I hate Word? and sent my MS to my editor.
One last little remark -- I have Word Perfect set up to convert
/N to the word
Nikodemus along with several other handy shortcuts, with the odd result that I can do longer spell my hero's name. And in fact, when I am not in WP, I'll type
/n and sit there wondering why it doesn't change to
Nikodemus.
On to Scandal.
Labels: Danish, Magellan's Witch, Names, Red Bra, Revisions
(4) comments
Saturday, October 27, 2007
All Revised Out
I think I'm done with revisions to Magellan's Witch. I got through it today without anything major. I'll put in the paper changes tomorrow and send it off. I need to get back to work on Scandal. Yikes.
Got pumpkins today. Carving tomorrow.
To bed now.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions, Scandal
(0) comments
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Wow, 1,000 posts old Plus Reporting In
This is my 1,000th post. All the way from April 2001 to October 2007. That's six years of blogging. Allow me to step into my
Way Back Machine. I was following the always fascinating
Dave Winer and he was talking about blogging like it was the best thing since sliced bread. Hmm, I said. I think he's right. So I tried Radio UserLand, but (sorry Dave) it wasn't as easy as I needed it to be on the crappy equipment that I had. Full time job, very young child, and I think I was in grad school then, too. Plus the writing. But Blogger (before Google) was dead easy, so I did that and Dave was right. Blogger had some growing pains, but eventually Goolge bought them out and sent all the paid subscribers a free t-shirt AND later when things were NOT smooth a free Google hoodie. And I was extremely cute in my hoodie so all was forgiven.
And now it's today. 1000 posts later. Lots of writers blog now. Blogging is no big deal, but it's still fun for me. I like doing it. Happy 1,000th post Writer's Diary!
OK, reporting in. Somehow I made it through Magellan's Witch. There were three, make the four really truly ugly chapters. I cut one, rewrote another and wanted to slit my wrists over one just this afternoon, and then there's the one that I rewrote, and when I re-read it realized I needed to put most of it back the way it was because I'd actually made it worse not to mention totally boring. So for the first time practically ever, I went into my archives and pulled out the previous version and replaced the back 4/5ths with the old version. Today was brutal. Really. I was up until 11:00 last night, slept until 5:30 this morning(no gym, rats! but I needed the coherence of an extra hour's sleep) then skipped the lunch hour walk for the 3rd day in a row-- those poor guys I usually walk with think I hate them--- to sit outside by my car to read through MW. Then home to get my son to a soccer scrimmage. I sat in the car and worked... Then my sister picked him up to take him to my brother's for a birthday party for the twins, and I went home and worked on MW. The bit I thought was dreadful at lunchtime turned out not to be quite so bad. But I got through all the changes and have conformed everything I think. And since I told my editor I would have it to her in a week
or so I decided what with discretion being the better part of valor and all, that I can email it Monday morning, thus giving me another weekend. And putting me behinder yet on Scandal. But that's a panic for another day.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, panic, Revisions
(2) comments
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Totally Cool -- hyperventilating! -- stuff
1) From the
Romantic Times newsletter:
My big news this month is all about our upcoming Pittsburgh convention, April 16-20, 2008. We just received word that hunky Highlander Adrian Paul will definitely be there.
ohmygosh I can hardly breathe!! RWA is in San Francisco this year so will I have the money to finally go to an RT? Better question: I have a book due May 1, will I be able to take that much time off when a deadline is so close?
2) Is this the future of news delivery?
NY Times River. Take a look. Make sure you click on the pluses to expand. This is from
Dave Winer who pretty much brought us blogging and RSS. And now this. Expect what he's done here to start showing up in how content, particularly feeds, gets delivered and aggregated. And not just news. Neat.
3) ohmygod, I'm not quite done with revisions to Magellan's Witch.
sound of whip crackingLabels: Adrian Paul, Magellan's Witch, Revisions, technology
(2) comments
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Today, I revised.
That pretty much says it all.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions
(0) comments
Saturday, October 20, 2007
The end is near! I mean nigh. The end is close, er twenty feet away?
I finished the chapter revisions for Magellan's Witch. I have the thing printed out so I can read it through tomorrow for typos and other ickiness. I have lost all sense of the story at this point.
Going to bed.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions
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Friday, October 19, 2007
Friday has been Revised to Day of Fri.
Still revising Magellan's Witch. I just chopped an entire chapter.
Whack!I'm trying not to freak.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions
(0) comments
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Just call me a Revisionist
Still working on Magellan's Witch revisions. Making progress. What else? It's late, I'm tired. Nothing new. I'm just a revision machine.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions
(0) comments
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Sometimes I Wish I Were My Cat
Right now, my cat Jake is asleep on my copy of the edited MS for Magellan's Witch. I wish I was him. Sleeping with no cares. He looks so comfy.
Anyway, I'm done going through the MS for the changes. Tomorrow I'll do a read through to make sure I've hit everything.
I slept until 8:30 this morning, skipped my RWA meeting, had to, rats. And worked from 9:00 to 3:00 when I had to take my son to his soccer game. I bought us pizza on the way home and have been working since about 6:30. I took a few breaks, once to scrub some paper off the windows (left over, I'm ashamed to admit, from when they were installed) and, no I DO NOT want to talk about why I so desperately needed to scrape old labels off the windows right then, and another break to make my son S'mores for breakfast. Yeah, I'm a Bad Mom. My son had chocolate, marshmallows and Graham crackers for breakfast. For a while I was frantically wracking my brain to figure out how to put my villain into this one scene and I swear, I was doing the patented
Sandy Schwab Head: Desk move for way too long. Then I got up to pick up the dog and he licked me (ick! I wish he wouldn't do that) and suddenly I knew how to do it. So I went back and fixed that scene which was the last major fix, I think.
Now off to bed.
Labels: Bad Mom, Magellan's Witch, Revisions
(2) comments
Friday, October 12, 2007
Should I Revise This Title?
Working on revisions for Magellan's Witch. I'm almost done with the initial pass through. Then I have to read it to make sure it hangs together still. I can't tell anymore.
It's started raining here and that means soon the grass will be a lovely green.
Off to bed.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, Revisions
(0) comments
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Gym Elf!
Things are crazy right now. I'm working on revisions to Magellan's Witch while trying not to get too behind on Scandal. Yikes! Crazy. I'm going to have to skip my RWA chapter meeting this Saturday. Rats. Too late to get my money back. But I need those Saturday hours for writing.
Today, I went to the gym after work, with my binder of Scandal (How many people do you know who have a binder full of Scandal? I'd like to know!) and as I was pedaling away, even though I should have been doing resistance work, who did I see but the Gym Elf.
Sigh. The Gym Elf, in case you don't know, is a gentleman of pulchritudinous attributes. Not sure if you can say that about a guy, but I just did so I guess you can. I used to see him all the time when I was working on the Dark Elf story, and he was my inspiration for the hero. Which is why I took to calling him the Gym Elf. Any way, it was nice to have a sighting.
OK, off to bed.
Labels: Gym Elf, Magellan's Witch, Revisions, Scandal
(0) comments
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Collision Course
So, the darling child did not properly plan completing his homework and some projects that were due. The result is that over the last two days, chaos has reigned in the Jewel household. Mostly he's been good about not wasting time with hysterics about the unfairness of his teachers and how his poor planning is not his fault. Mostly because I looked him in the eye and warned him, in a very stern voice, that he didn't have that kind of time to waste and I didn't have the patience to listen to it. Tomorrow should be the last day of panicked work for him.
In the meantime, I managed, just barely, to keep my minimum words per day on Scandal, only today, my revisions came for Magellan's Witch. The changes center around two basic elements and I'm about 1/8th of the way through, I think. So, I think I'm going to print out Scandal so I can work on that during the odd downtimes and then work on MW at night.
Arghh! Only tomorrow is Chocolate Mousse night after soccer practice...
Oh, also, I have to write a book review, I'll explain how that came about later, and also read a book for a blurb. Someone actually wants me to do that. Weird. I almost asked my agent if there was some mistake. But apparently not.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, On being busy, Revisions, Scandal
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