FT...What?

So, in the YA book, there's a punky teenager who has an "FTW" T-shirt. This confused the copy editor, who was like, "Why don't you spell out 'For the Win'? Clearly 'FTW' has no other meaning." So I had to explain to him that, this being a punky teenager and all, the shirt they wore did have another meaning that the teenager was hoping adults don't know about--namely, "Fuck the World."

I told this story to my sister, who works with punky teenagers, and--you guessed it--she got really annoyed and was like, "Of course it means 'Fuck the World'! Clearly 'FTW' has no other meaning!"

I think we're lucky she didn't assign us all detention....

Progress report

I wound up thinking about how close I am to being done with the YA book...if I just push a little more.... So today I worked on the copy edit and got done through chapter 7 (plus some whole-text stuff) before I was like, ughughughugh. It's not the most exciting work, for sure. I honestly don't know what I'll do tomorrow.

Progress report

I went over the copy-edited layout of the YA book--yeah, he took his time about it, but he certainly hasn't gotten any less awesome since I used him the last time!

The downside is, since it was a good copy edit, lots of little things need fixing. That's going to screw up the layout in a lot of little ways, which will also need fixing...hmmm. I feel like I'm on a roll lately with Trials (it's amazing how much the change in POV has opened up the book), and I don't really want to fuck that up by switching to something that's going to require detail work (especially because tax time already gives me plenty of detail work). So I think I'm going to pack the YA layout away and focus on writing for now.

Ahoy! A plan!

Progress report

Starting back up again, vroom-vroom! I was working on the chapter where I need to change the point of view--I had to figure out some more background stuff first, but that's done, and I've basically outlined how I want the chapter to read. So, a good start after a long delay....

Hmmmm....

As you might have noticed, things got pretty heavy for me, and now Tax Time Approcheth. However, 1. I did manage to send an e-mail to the copy editor of the YA book wondering what the hell happened (if I don't get an answer, I will jam in Finding a New Copy Editor and Actually Getting a Book Out onto my to-do list), and 2. Look! Large publishers are seeking to bulk up their non-e-bookable titles! Cooking and children's books, plus gardening. Yup....

Ugh

Yeah, I didn't get stuff done yesterday--on top of everything else, I had to start taking antibiotics thanks to some old-person dental issues, so I'm feeling pretty blah. We'll see how things go. I'm likely going to have to take on some additional family duties very soon, so...it may be a while before I can get back in the saddle on this thing....

Progress report

Yay! Finally I was able to jump back in and make some progress! Actually it went pretty well--I focused on the chapters where I was re-introducing the world again; I was able to not just take stuff out but incorporate the more fun and clever stuff into earlier chapters. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to re-work the part where the tension needs to be heightened (something I think can be done by shifting the point of view).

Progress report

I edited through chapter 29, which is as far as I've written.

I feel a little ergh about the first draft--the first section is great, but that's because [SPOILER] is happening, so there's kind of a natural story arc. The problem is that after [SPOILER] is [SPOILER]ed, things start to wander a bit. So I need to ramp up the tension a little, which I think should be doable, since [SPOILER] happens next--I just need to rework that part so that its full impact is felt, which isn't happening right now because [SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER].

In addition, you can tell that there was a long interruption to writing it, because some of the much later chapters read like I'm trying to introduce the whole fictional world all over again. So that needs work before I push on.