At least, on paper.  I haven’t taken it back to the behemoth document yet.

I have been wrestling with a number of story-lumps while I fold laundry and chop food.

Not including the one I imagine all self-conscious novelists wrestle with— that effort to not-create the typical (Oates says inevitable) autobiographical 1st novel.

The main puzzle right now has been how to slow the character arc/growth of my main character.

That is, a great deal is demanded of her early in the novel, and (I think…) she can’t be too strong too quickly, or the continued battles don’t/won’t be significant or even necessary.

I was thankful today to come up with some “immaturity markers” that I can weave into both of her early battles.

Now I need to decide how much of my first scene I can let go.  In it Linnea is forced to act utterly out of character, but since it’s the first scene there’s no way to know it’s out of character (aside from the leprous telling).

I probably mention it because I’m convinsing myself it needs to go, for the good of the story, and I “grieve” its loss.

Not really.

Just its being the first chapter for so long means I’ve spent the most time with it and it’s the most polished.  Letting it go means sacrificing part of my ego, along with my time.  I feel it’s a very well-written chunk.

But I’m more relieved at seeing a clean fix, so I’ll probably adjust pretty quickly.

I’m just under half of the way through my reading, and gave up on resisting the red-pen last night. (I’m reading on a print-out to keep me from making, erm, impulsive changes that would make following reader/editing marks harder.)

But *MAN* this is humbling.

I remember Georgiana talking about finding overused phrases in her final read-through and I have *certainly * found mine.

Mainly a bunch of head-tilting and vomit. Isn’t that lovely.  The head-tilting was initially (along with casually looking at the sun) meant to be a subtle marker of djinness. (I had visualized a bird-like sort of movement) but it spilled to other characters and is (yet) another thing to be fixed.

Jay was right to make me send it off before I read it myself– since his goal was to see it done/fixed rather than spending another six months on another run-through.  His/my hope is that multiple eyes will abbreviate this stage and move things along quicker.

But having read this much I know I’m not giving out any more copies until certain things are cleaned up.

Of course, there are things I’m waiting for advice on before I’ll be sure how to clean them (which is another argument for exposing it to the outside world).

For example, it was apparent before the end of Scene Two that a disproportionate amount of my fantasy world is calm and/or analytical.

Some writers populate their worlds with dragons and nymphomaniacs.  I have the observant and reasonable.  My experience tells me there’s a greater tolerance (not to mention interest) for the former than the latter.

I haven’t gone back to the beginning to red-pen it, preferring at this point to simply make lists of Find words that will flag the passages I need to rework.

Each of the many imperfections still makes my toes curl, but at the same time it’s been delightful taking my work in as a unit, riding the story as a story rather than rebar and scaffolding.

And that may be a sign I haven’t done enough work on it: I’m not tired of it yet.

I have a final word-count: 115,792

Then, as I rattled off the flaws I need to go back and repair, Jay told me I have to let it go.  Tonight.

Any takers?

I’ll delay as long as I can.