Thursday, February 25, 2010

Revision Mania

I've made no secret of that fact that I'm in the midst of revisions on CALLARION AT NIGHT. From December 31, when I said the core of the story was "done," I've easily rewritten or added a net amount of pages between 50 and 100.

Yeah, the core of the story is not "done." In fact, after my wonderful amazing fantastic betas read it, I discovered that the core of the story was nowhere near "done." I've easily set off on more research in the past two months than during the eight months it took me to complete the first draft. Language and psychology have been the big time sucks during revisions thus far (thanks to Amalia for letting me pick her brain about Old Norse words). My friends Alice and Casey are helping a lot on the psychology front, as is the brilliant one know 'round these parts as fairyhedgehog.

Suffice to say, I'm moving right along through this revision thing. It takes me roughly two to three days to go through a chapter, so I'm estimating (read:praying) to be done with this third (I think) round of edits sometime in March or April. I should precede the previous by saying I expect the edits on the first ten chapters to be done by then. I've split the thing into chunks to save my sanity. Also because the middle is going to require massive rewrites based on what I do with these first ten chapters, so I'd rather get this beginning ironed out before moving on. I might actually hit my August goal to start querying. Who knows?

*crosses fingers.*

10 comments:

Anita Saxena said...

I totally understand where you are at. Best of luck.

Shannon O'Donnell said...

Those are some logical goals, Matt. They sound pretty doable. Good luck, crossed fingers, and fairy dust sent your way. :-)

Joshua McCune said...

Your patience far exceeds mine :)

Matthew Delman said...

Anita --

I know you do. Thanks for that.

Shannon --

Thank you.

Bane --

I'd more chalk it up to my sheer bloody-mindedness about the whole thing, truth be told. Being stubborn has its good points.

Davin Malasarn said...

It's exciting to see how much hard work you are putting into this, Matthew. Good luck with all of the revisions!

Adam Heine said...

Bloody-mindedness is good. Later on, when you have an agent, you won't be saying, "Geez. I could've done this a whole three months faster if I hadn't done all that editing."

Good luck! Make this thing the best you can!

dolorah said...

Crossing my fingers for you!

I'm hoping to sit down this weekend and get started - and hopefully finished - on the critique suggestions I was sent. Mine are more about deleting and toning down scenes as opposed to complete re-writes though.

There's always the chance I end up rewriting quite a bit, but I'm hoping this thing will be done and ready for a round of queries.

Crossing my fingers for myself also.

.........dhole

Stephanie Thornton said...

Good luck! I think your goals are totally doable. I started major rewrites for Hat in August and finished mid-February.

You can do it!

Okay, Home Depot definitely needs to give a raise to their marketing department. As soon as I wrote that I thought, "We can help!"

Groan.

L. T. Host said...

LOL @ Stephanie.

I *hated* this part of WIND FURY. I spent ~seven years on "revisions", mostly involving being stuck on the first draft. Therefore, revising the first fifty pages til I could make the story work.

But, I think your sheer stubbornness (and the prodding of anxious friends) will definitely help you finish by August :)

fairyhedgehog said...

You're bound to get there if you keep at it as you are!

Oh and thanks for the kind mention. I'm blushing!