I read over Part 4 and input the changes! Whoo!
So, that’s a big hunk of the work done. (!!!) I’m going to go over it and make consistent things like dates & times & military titles. (Except now I’m pretty sure I lent my AP Stylebook & Chicago Manual of Style before I moved. Shit!)
I got Part 4 ready to be printed out, and input the changes to Part 3. Whoo!
All right! I have input the changes for the second half of Part 2 and read over Part 3. Part 4 is the last part, so I also made the file, although it needs to be gone over before I even print it out.
I read over the second half of Part 2. Instead of inputting the changes, I skipped ahead and put together Part 3—Parts 3 & 4 are considerably shorter, so that didn’t take so long.
Part 2 is even longer than Part 1, so I read & input changes just for the first half of it. That was a lot easier on me than doing the same job all day—I need to change position more. The new place has a smaller office, so I’ve only had my regular desk chair out, but today I finally pumped up the old ball chair. Having two different chairs makes the office look crowded and messy, but it will be worth it to be able to work long hours and still have feeling in both feet….
I input the changes to Part 1, which seems to have taken forever. I’ve printed out Part 2 to go over—I may get to that today, I may not.
It’s odd to think that there’s not really going to be a proper editing process—it’s not like someone’s going to recommend a B plot, you know? And since I’m not planning to do a paper copy, there won’t be the laying-out process. I guess after I’m done going through it, i’ll just contact the copy editor and see if he’ll take a look at it.
I put together Part 2 and input the changes to the Introduction. Whoo!
Went over the rest of what is now Part 1 and started Part 2. I’ve printed out the Introduction and Part 1 and am going to look them over.
I also found a couple of new sources today, which makes me happy. It’s hard because, while one can check things out of the local library—not quite the normal way, but it’s possible—the local system here doesn’t have a lot that’s helpful, and I’m not too thrilled with the idea of traveling around to some of the larger libraries. It’s definitely one of those perfectionist things—I think I can crank out a perfectly good book without reading that biography of that one guy that went out of print decades ago—so I’m trying to focus on the fact that 90% is good enough here….
I wrote the introductory material today and started in on the first chapter, cleaning up the letters and adding explanations where needed. Right now my thinking is to have each chapter be a different hospital, since my grandfather did move around. The downside is that some chapters are going to be really long and some really short. Maybe instead of making it Chapter 1, Chapter 2 I’ll make it Introduction and then Part 1, Part 2—that maybe gives people a better idea of what to expect.
I finished typing up the last of the letters today—the letters (plus my notes) are about 68K words, so that’s a decent length.
From a letter to the children.
The other day Lt. Colbaine Conflict—a very dirty raggedy lop-eared Irish terrier—had this nice little pair of pants. I took them away from him and washed them out. Now I can’t find whose pants they are and I’m sending them along to you….
The pants are pretty hard to button and so they must be English.
This, of course, leads to a researcher’s quandary—was this Irish terrier Lt. Colbaine Conflict, or Lt. Col. Baine Conflict? I’m assuming it’s the former, but given my grandfather’s loose attitude toward capitalization, I feel obligated to point out that it very well could be the latter.
My grandfather discussing a photograph of my mother, who was about 4 years old at the time.
G. has a tremendous tummy, with her britches about down & her tummy out. The pictures will be worth a good deal in blackmail in about 12-15 years.
As I’m getting closer to the end of the letters, I think what I’m going to do with the World War II stuff is to have the book have no art other than the cover (easier from a production standpoint) and then have bonus content on this Web site (instead of sample chapters) that will include stuff like my grandfather’s gazillion photographs, his cute little drawings, and the art side of the postcards.
I think that wouldn’t be too horribly time consuming, and that way people will have some access without having to go to the Museum of World War II and getting into the archives. My grandfather was pretty good about identifying the people in his photographs, and sometimes included where and when, so I think it might be useful to family and historians to have the photos in particular be more accessible. I am going to have to rope off the more-graphic surgery photos in some fashion, but that should be easy enough.
I have a cover mock-up that my sister doesn’t entirely like but (as she said) it’s my book (honestly, I think she’ll like it more, or at least understand it more, once she reads the letters). And I have a title that we both like. Once the letters are all typed up, I plan to give copies of them to various family members and tell the side that doesn’t know that I’m planning to make a book out of this, so you know—totally looking forward to splitting the family and being disowned. “Everyone mentioned is dead, so they can’t sue” while legally accurate is, I suspect, an argument that will work less well with relatives….
Further reflections upon my grandfather’s new post.
Whee Jesus have I stepped into something.
So this is in the middle of a letter where my grandfather is explaining that he got orders to go to a different hospital the next morning. Both he & his CO thought that was impossible, so they bought him another day and shipped his things after him. He went to London, got a 20-minute INTENSE briefing, and then was sent off to a hospital with some 1,100 patients, most of whom needed complicated surgery. While in London waiting for a train….
While killing time I visited Madam Tussaud’s wax works & enjoyed it very much. I suspect that you have seen it as it would certainly appeal to you. The figures are lifelike to say the least. When one of them suddenly turns out to be a guard instead of a wax figure it makes you start.
From a letter to the kids.
I picked some fuchsia seed to dry and send home for you to plant. They are a pretty red flower on a bush—but a mouse came into my room and you know sompin—he ate up all the fuchsia seeds. I have set a trap for him but he eats the bait off. He has eaten cheese, a peanut and a piece of chocolate candy without even springing the trap. And I tied them on too with a piece of thread. At night he rattles the papers in my box but when I turn on the light he stops. I think I shall never catch him.
Ah, the woes of wartime cooking—if I’m remembering who Mrs C is correctly, she was someone my grandfather met while stationed elsewhere in Great Britain.
Mrs C sent me some shortbread and a fruit cake. She didn’t have any fruit for the fruit cake and it seems a little heavy to undertake. I think I’ll put it on the bar….
My wooly slippers got pretty dirty and I had them autoclaved. They came out pretty small—about bit enough for Alice and very hard. Lucky I have the old canoe shoes isn’t it.
Both grandparents worked at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (PBBH), which is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Today I have had a wonderful day. Visited the 49th Station Hospital where K. is chief of surgical service. Did you know him at the PBBH? He has a grand service at a hospital that is serving Air Bases as ours is & I got a lot out of being able to spend the morning with him. He even had steak for lunch. It reminded me a good deal of the PBBH steaks we both know but was very good for a change….
One of the officers here…wrote his wife asking for some elastic for ladies bloomers. It came today by air mail without letter or comment.
The nervousness hits, right? It’s been so long—will the beta readers HATE the latest incarnation? Will it have been worth the wait? Oh God….
I input the changes to Trials (wow, that took all day) and sent them out to the beta readers. Whoo!
It’s shorter than the first two books: 84,500 words instead of the ~110,000 of the other books. I think that’s OK (although I guess my beta readers will tell me if it’s not)—there’s less world building, and the story itself is a little more narrowly focused.