Where This Stands

So, what the devil is going on with The Honorable Thing?  It’s been three years since this work began, why isn’t it ready for press?  Several reasons, of course.  Mostly because the writing took a long time to be done.

Pass 1, consisting of agglomeration of all the writings to date, was completed on December 9, 2014.  At the time, the manuscript amassed 221 thousand words, about 976 pages.  I felt that such a huge work could not readily be edited using just Word.  So I imported it into Scrivener.

Scrivener is a great piece of software.  Lots of bells and whistles.  So distracting!  The learning curve consumed some time, as well as ‘parting’ out the MSS into ‘scenes’, so I could easily cut, paste, move, or delete scenes.

Then I was ready for Pass 2, where I flensed the blubber out of the novel.  That completed in January, 2015.  The work is now about 106 thousand, with about 20k more to cut from it.

I wanted to get a sense of how things are, so I have sent it out to Alpha Readers.  Feedback is coming in, and it has some commonalities for fixes.  Pass 3 should begin around mid-March.  I will keep you posted.

Update: 3/29/15

I am sure someone out there is wondering, vaguely, whatever happened to this work.  Yes, I’ve been working on it.  Let me catch all of you (looks out over a barren field) up on what’s been going on.  I mean, it’s been a year…

NaNoWriMo took over my life in late summer.  We did this incredible 24-hour writing marathon, and between the planning for it, plus the usual November madness, well, THT took a back seat.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Abattoir…

You might have written this off as a moribund blog (one of millions), and to a certain extent, you are right–I’ve not been maintaining it as much as I should be.  There is, certainly, a reason.

I’ve finally finished parting out The Honorable Thing.

What that means:  Over the course of four (that’s right, FOUR) NaNoWriMo events, I wrote the incredible mass of verbiage that is The Honorable Thing.  I erased nothing: every false start, do-over, go-back-three-chapters-and-try-again was retained.  This was done for several reasons, the most shallow of which was to keep my word-count up. 

It also meant I had 219,000 words written for a 70,000 word novel.  I had to get this monstrosity onto the literary version of Biggest Loser, and fast!  Enter Scrivener.

Everyone I know raves about this program.  So, with a 30 day trial, I figured, what do I have to lose?  Besides the month, and I wasn’t really getting anything done anyway.  So, I loaded the whole fetid landfill into Scrivener and began.

For each scene (and I read them all), I wrote a short one-line synopsis and created a short document.  (Control-K.  Wonderful tool)  It took me some time, because I had to read the stinking thing, and 219k isn’t a lazy weekend read. 

I have 183 scenes.  Some two dozen or more are do-overs, so it’s pick one over the other.  Some scenes are 400 wors long, one is 5,000.  Some I absolutely know are in, others, just as certainly, are out.  The rest are in the vast gray.  And so comes the rebuild of THT. 

I promise I will post the blow-by-blow building of this (hopefully) epic tale.

The scenes that get cut?  They might just be reworked into character sketches, additional blog fodder, and setting descriptions.  Everything one needs to know everything THT.

Thanks for hanging with me, folks.

Let the Flensing Begin!

Well, the primary writing for The Honorable Thing has wrapped up.  Here are the stats for those inclined to look:  about 172980 words and about 775 pages.  This is far too large for commercial fiction for a new YA book.  The man who challenged me to write this said “Give me 70,000 words, and if it’s good, I’ll see what my people can do with it.”

Thus, the flensing.  I have to trim 103,000 words from this work, some 59.5 percent.  That’s some reduction!  It’s OK, though.  Some of the material can be repurposed for character studies, blog posts, and other worthy ventures.  Short stories, too, I think.  We’ll see. 

Think Biggest Loser is going for massive reductions?  Wait until you see what gets carved out of The Honorable Thing!

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I really dislike how reblogging looks here, so I’m just doing a cut-and-paste from my main blog.  In the future, I may just do the main post here, and a short note on the main author blog.  We’ll see.

Still here…

The project took a bit of a break, but I’m back in the saddle again.  Saw my mentor during BEA, and he encouraged me to keep writing.  So I am. 

Word count doesn’t mean much right now…I’m just trying to finish the action.  I estimate another month.  It should all be done by the Fourth.  Then comes the flensing.

Progress Report

The Second Draft goal of 80k was in fact reached on 30 April.  Then I took a break.  I estimate another 20-30k are needed to finish the Second Draft.  Then, combined with the abortive First Draft, I will have a MSS of some 140-150k, which will get flensed down to 70k. 

So, what have I been doing for May?

I’ve had a couple of other, time-sensitive, writing projects, the last of which will wind down by the end of Memorial Day.  Then I will finish THT in true NaNo Fashion.

Day 30–The End of Camp NaNoWriMo-April

Words written today:  8400

Word Count:  83606  Goal Trend: +3606     Day’s Avg Rate:  1874     Total Avg Rate:  1813

Commentary:  Camp NaNo is over.  I was behind as much as 20999 on the 20th, requiring me to write over 48,700  words in order to not just make my goal on time, but win my cabin.  It was the most writing in the shortest time I have ever done.   Yes, 3 Day Novel is 30k in 72 hours, but that is done over Labor Day Weekend, with three completely empty days.  Camp NaNo’s goal was 80,000, a number I have never hit in one month of writing.

Over the past ten days, I have battled sleep issues, internal family issues, and a last minute contruction project that completely erased Saturday, during which I wrote a mere 700 words.   I knew I would make it, simply because the past six years of NaNo have taught me that given enough time, I can crank out the words.   I just had to put in the work.

I have to say thank you to The Wonderful Wife for all of her support during this most trying Camp NaNos ever.

Day 29

Words written today:  4341

Word Count:  75206  Goal Trend: -2127     Day’s Avg Rate:  1786      Total Avg Rate:  1806

Commentary:   One day to go to finish 80,ooo words for Camp NaNoWriMo!  Unfortunately, the novel will not be finished.  Tomorrow will get us to Homecoming, but the ending has to be on Graduation Day.  I estimate another 20-30k before this draft is complete. 

There will be lots of stuff removed from the combined drafts (140k probable total, 70k finished product)  I am wondering if I should produce a ‘companion volume’ of the relevant material for web-only content.  I’d hate to just waste it.

Day 28

Words written today:  8134

Word Count: 70865    Goal Trend: -3802     Day’s Avg Rate:  1877      Total Avg Rate:  1807

Commentary:   Best line of the day:    “Real bravery is always told in the third person.”  –COL Nicholus Plattur, USA (Ret) when asked why he doesn’t talk about his Silver Star.

So, what happened to Day 27?  We had new flooring put in the kitchen.  It was such a disruptive process that it was quite impossible to write.  I managed only some 600 words, which are NOT rolled into the totals above. 

Good things happened today–got a new plot twist to keep the conflict up, Al’s having a tough time this second year, and his hunches are becoming a lot more discrete. 

 

Day 26

Words written today:  3611

Word Count:  62036  Goal Trend: -7297  Day’s Avg Rate:  1952   Total Avg Rate:  1797

Commentary:  Today has been one long fight against falling asleep at the computer.  Four seperate writing session were terminated not because of the usual reasons (food, bathroom, or end-of-topic, but because I could not remain awake.  I’ve done 3600, about 1400 short of my daily goal.  However, tomorrow is Saturday, and I feel that I can make it to 70k with ease.

A high point.  1550 words in 44 minutes yields 2114 words per hour—my fastest rate yet.