Draft 8, 100%

[darkemeralds]

I finished my final draft of Restraint on Thursday and sent it out yesterday to four champion fellow writers willing to read it for structure, pacing, flow, and logic. That's a big, big job.

I expect to get suggestions back for further small changes, and of course I spotted typos the instant I hit the send button. I could undoubtedly still shave a few words for style, or add a sentence here or there to fill out a minor plot point, but the novel--this novel--is finished. Any big changes at this point would be making it into a different novel.

It's a little weird, cleaning up all the files, closing all the research tabs, shutting down the gigantic spreadsheet called "Engineering Restraint" after more than two years of rewrites. The prospect of starting a new project is daunting.

But I'm starting. I'm thinking about the new political situation, and how it's my responsibility to write for the Resistance in some way. Not a dystopian Hunger-Games-ish thing--that's not who I am as a writer--but somehow a weaving of resistance into the fabric of the historical novel I'm already researching.

Comments

[dine]

congrats on finishing! that's big, and it's great you made it

[darkemeralds]

Thanks.

What happened to the fannish meet up?

[darkemeralds]

Thank you!

Say, what happened to the local fannish meetup? Did I lose track?

[ranunculus]

Wow! You finished it. That is great! I'm always impressed with how dedicated, talented and wonderful my friends are!

[darkemeralds]

I'm always impressed with that too! I'm surrounded by wonderful people.

[greghatcher]

The satisfaction of finally finishing never gets old. I have a set of little rituals that accompany this that have changed over the years, but one has not changed since I was sixteen; my old English teacher Letty still gets a copy. She's 92 now and largely bedridden but she has gotten one of everything since the mid-70s. She probably has better tearsheet files on me than I do.

I put her on the beta list for the new one because it's a diversion for her and she is endlessly interested in the process. She was fascinated to hear about your new Wiccan thing too. "My, my, I had no idea. I don't recall you ever talking about that place, though I remember Anne-Marie." Because I was too embarrassed to admit to a lot of the shit I got up to in the 80s, frankly.

Fun fact: in the LATE 80s I was a consultant on what became the Letty Owings House over in east Portland. Yeah, it's THAT Letty. That's a story in itself that I wrote up a few years ago for the column, here. Naming no names but no one cares now, really. The kludgy CBR revamp is annoying but I think the link should still work.

[darkemeralds]

I just now finished correcting some typos and little things and PDF-ing the whole manuscript after reading it over on my Kindle, for one more beta-reader who wants to give me feedback. So this afternoon it really, really is out of my hands, and I feel a bit bereft.

That story on CBR is great. Is Marianne a pseudonym for someone we both know? Because if so, good God I had no idea of that whole story.

[greghatcher]

No, her first marriage was flaming out while I was at PSU, I think she was still in D.C. then. She is out of prison now, staying clean, and doing rather well as a writer herself. More of a political writer and essayist. But she gets paid.

Edited to add: here is her blog version, with some of the jail drawings mentioned in the CBR piece.