Status Report
Sep. 19th, 2004 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonClosing in on the end of The Rewrite That Will Not Die 2: The Winnowing.
Chapters completed: 29
Revised page count: 590
Revised manual word count: 145,041 (net words cut 2213)
Revised Word line count with a zero stuck on the end word count: 144,760 (net words cut 1890)
It seems to me that in these later chapters as I'm racing towards the climax, the writing is much tighter than the saggy middle where I did so much hacking. I'm making a bunch of small cuts, the rare paragraph here and there, but not big blocks of text like before. And I'm happy I made it down to 145k. I think realistically, given that I've only got 4 chapters and an epi to go, I can probably expect to get this down another thousand or so, but I probably won't make 140k. Still, I've cut 11,000 words out of this draft so far.
The other thing I'm noticing in these late chapters is that at a certain point I started to do a lot of shortcutting. There's a certain point where you can see the fatigue set in to my writing and I just started taking the easy way out. When I did the second draft, I eliminated quite a bit of shortcutting, but again, the fatigue hit me there, too. There's more to do—but I'm done with this ms. at the moment. When I complete this draft, I'm going to polish up the synopsis and first 60 and set it loose to wander the world for awhile. At some point, I might like to go over the last ten chapters or so and see if I can clean up some more of that shortcutting, but I'm just too tired of it all at the moment. I so want to move on to something else.
Of course, if someone would pay me to do edits, I think my energy level might renew dramatically. :-)
I might even have finished the final chapters this weekend, but my friends are kidnapping me today and taking me to the Getty Museum to see two exhibits currently up:
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/sea_tails/
This is a reassembling of an 80's art installation featuring sound and visual recreations of the sea.
And "Coming of Age in Ancient Greece" doesn't appear to have it's own web page. It just went up last weekend.
Then my friends are taking me to dinner at a nice restaurant in Brentwood—Zax. I plan to allow myself to be thoroughly feted.
Chapters completed: 29
Revised page count: 590
Revised manual word count: 145,041 (net words cut 2213)
Revised Word line count with a zero stuck on the end word count: 144,760 (net words cut 1890)
It seems to me that in these later chapters as I'm racing towards the climax, the writing is much tighter than the saggy middle where I did so much hacking. I'm making a bunch of small cuts, the rare paragraph here and there, but not big blocks of text like before. And I'm happy I made it down to 145k. I think realistically, given that I've only got 4 chapters and an epi to go, I can probably expect to get this down another thousand or so, but I probably won't make 140k. Still, I've cut 11,000 words out of this draft so far.
The other thing I'm noticing in these late chapters is that at a certain point I started to do a lot of shortcutting. There's a certain point where you can see the fatigue set in to my writing and I just started taking the easy way out. When I did the second draft, I eliminated quite a bit of shortcutting, but again, the fatigue hit me there, too. There's more to do—but I'm done with this ms. at the moment. When I complete this draft, I'm going to polish up the synopsis and first 60 and set it loose to wander the world for awhile. At some point, I might like to go over the last ten chapters or so and see if I can clean up some more of that shortcutting, but I'm just too tired of it all at the moment. I so want to move on to something else.
Of course, if someone would pay me to do edits, I think my energy level might renew dramatically. :-)
I might even have finished the final chapters this weekend, but my friends are kidnapping me today and taking me to the Getty Museum to see two exhibits currently up:
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/sea_tails/
This is a reassembling of an 80's art installation featuring sound and visual recreations of the sea.
And "Coming of Age in Ancient Greece" doesn't appear to have it's own web page. It just went up last weekend.
Then my friends are taking me to dinner at a nice restaurant in Brentwood—Zax. I plan to allow myself to be thoroughly feted.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-19 09:30 pm (UTC)Enjoy the ehibition -- it looks fascinating. I'm off to bed with a coffee and a pile of mags that have been building up all year, but I'll be thinking of your dinner.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 04:08 am (UTC)Two complete rewrites in less than three months. I don't recommend it. But I wasn't sure how much the writing schedule will be interrupted by the office move and I wanted to get this done before then. But I am quite pleased with 145k. I'll be even more pleased if I can get it down to 142 or 143k.
Enjoy the ehibition -- it looks fascinating.
Really good. I may try to write it up if I have time. And the weather was gorgeous--sweeping L.A. vistas and a blue sea on the horizon and little smog to block the view.
but I'll be thinking of your dinner.
Mmmm. Divine. A couple of lovely glasses of cote du rhone, then I started off with a lovely pate with hazelnuts and a small romaine and parmesan salad. Then I was full--but dinner arrived. One if the best angus steaks I've had in ages, perfectly grilled, tender, every bite paradise--in a wine reduction sauce and with a stilton aioili sauce on the side, tempura fried onions. I was even fuller. But we had to have dessert! I had a frozen praline cream concoction topped with a mixed fruit sauce--blackberries, blueberries, strawberries. Heaven, heaven, heaven.
A lovely day altogether.