Within Range

August 19

8:30 a.m.

Well, I did it. Some on Saturday, but mostly on Sunday and Monday night.

Rangergirl revisions are done. I finished rewriting the replacement scenes, and then propagated the relevant changes throughout the manuscript. I did a little line-editing, because that's difficult to resist. Very late last night I made the last change and sent it off to the agent. If she likes my changes, she'll represent me. Even if she ultimately decides not to work with me, her suggestions made the book much better, and I'm grateful. The fact that she made such good suggestions makes me hope she does decide to represent me, of course.

I'm glad I read through it again. I noticed some annoying stylistic tics, like the fact that I had about two dozen sentences that began with the words "I mean" and ended by trailing off into ellipses. I got rid of all but two or three of them, and gave all of those to the one character who seems most likely to talk that way. I cleaned some other stuff up, too, and made some small but highly relevant changes to one of the characters -- basically I rewrote every line of dialogue he had, and every action tag, and every interaction he had with the other characters. My conception of him didn't match the stuff he was saying and the goofy-ass way he was acting in the novel, so I brought him more into line with what I (and the story) needed him to be.

So, anyway, it's a much better book now, and having re-read the entire thing in the past three days, I'm actually quite pleased with it. I hardly cringed at all while reading it. It's not perfect, and I'm sure it has all the usual first-novel flaws that I'm too close to it to notice, but I think it's good, too. (Of course, it's actually my fifth finished novel, but it's the first one I'd be happy to see published...)

I lost a big sex scene in the rewrite, but I gained a scene where someone gets kicked in half, so I guess it all balances out...

Otherwise, I've been working on reviews. I've got three of them due tomorrow, and have finished one and half-finished each of the other two. Still means I have a fair bit of work to do tonight, though. But having the novel off my back is a great relief! The agent is going to read it, and get back to me after Labor Day weekend, which means I have a couple of weeks of not thinking about the book!

Heather's going away to a writing workshop this weekend, which is sad, sad, sad. She'll be gone Friday-Monday (though she gets back Monday afternoon, so she'll be home when I get there). I'm going to be ridiculously lonely. But I'll get stuff done, like critiquing some stories (one of which I've had since late last month -- sorry I'm so slow, Jim!), and working on the robot collab I'm doing with Greg (I am, officially, the bottleneck on that project), and getting a poem or two ready for the Strange Horizons editors. I actually feel like I'm close to being caught-up. Keeping busy this weekend will help me with missing Heather, and I might even clear out my perennial backlog of unresolved work.

10:55 p.m.

Tonight, I wrote reviews! 1500 words' worth. Covered Kiernan's Low Red Moon, de Lint's Spirits in the Wires, and Mamatas's 3000 MPH in Every Direction at Once. Are my reviews any good? I have no idea. Heather's reading them now. She'll tell me, I guess.

So what's been going on besides writing? Well, Susan's back, so on Sunday Heather and I got together with her, hooray! and had sushi to celebrate the sale of my collection (I was holding off on celebratory-dinner for that, so we could do it with Susan) and the fact that she and Matt had just found an apartment. We talk talk talked, and there wasn't enough time in the evening to catch up on everything, but it was lovely, and we'll get together again soon, I hope. I plan to help her and Matt move next weekend, while Heather's off and away.

Heather and I have been watching bad movies, like How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, which was pure froth, and American Pie 2, which was less disgusting than the first one, which made its endearing qualities more obvious. It's nice to see Allison Hannigan in any role.

Now I'm reading The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, which is always one of the great pleasures of the year (and it doesn't hurt that me, Heather, and Floodwater are all mentioned in Terri Windling's summation!). Not much else happening just now.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 83,400

Words written since last entry:
3,500

Flytrap! Sure, we could use some extra money, if you want to help out. Maybe we could even do a color cover!