Jeri Smith-Ready

Done

I just finished and turned in the first draft of The Reawakened. There's no way to describe the complicated mixture of triumph and sorrow and relief I feel. Let's call it triliefow.

The triliefow-ness (triliefow-icity?) is more intense with this book than any before, partly because it's the end of a series, and partly because it was the longest novel I've ever written, coming in around 142K words. If you add in all the crap I cut when I revised two of the storylines, I ended up writing 200K. They don't call it epic fantasy for nuthin'.

But the work on TR has just begun. I will likely tear out at least half of what I've written, rearrange the rest, and add on another 50K words or so. My friend and awesome novelist Maria V. Snyder likens the process of writing a book to building a house, where a first draft involves building the frame and the walls, and the revisions are the remodeling and decorating.

If that's the case, I'd be the most expensive homebuilder in the business. I'd be the one ripping down walls, digging up foundations, and maybe even relocating the house to a different neighborhood.

But everyone's process is different. I might write a first draft twice as fast as Maria, but mine are probably twice ten times as embarrassing. (Every first draft is embarrassing; let's not kid ourselves.) Most of my time and effort goes into the rewriting stage--I'll probably spend two months' worth of ten-hour days rewriting The Reawakened, if I'm lucky enough to get that much time.

Or maybe lightning struck this time, and I nailed the basic story and characters on the first try, and the revisions will be about remodeling and redecorating--deepening themes, beautifying the prose, smoothing the rough transitions.

Yeah, right.

But that's all later, in January and February, after I hear from my editor and beta readers and have a chance to put a fresh eye on it myself.

First, I'm taking the weekend off, for the first time since, hmm, July. I'm going to do anything I want.

Tomorrow I shall start the brain-douching process with the entire series of Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, the tenth and final volume of which I never read, because I wanted to reread Vols. 1-9 leading up to it.

Monday morning I'll start writing Bad to the Bone. Monday evening during the slaughterfest biggest upset in NFL history I'll begin the million little business things I've neglected over the last six weeks.

But right now I'm not even going to think about that. I'm just going to sit here and admire those two little words:




Oooh. Pretty.

Labels: craft, football, reading, The Reawakened, vampire series

• posted by Jeri @ 8:36 PM
• 2 comments