A Novel Edit!--Kyrnie
May. 22nd, 2006 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marfiskHi everyone. Life got a little chaotic and so when Bring Out Your Dead finished, I let this blog lie fallow. Well, I think it's time to start planting again.
I plan to do something different this time and blog about the process of doing a late stage edit. So to start out, I'm going to offer up some history :).
The novel I'm about to edit now is called Kyrnie after the main character. It is a sociological science fiction novel about cultures clashing and forging new paths out of disaster. Hmm, guess it's got a premise after all ;).
This story first appeared as one of my earlier short stories back in 1989, the ones that were about 8k of story summary and I finally grew mature enough to recognize that I'd been writing long synopses rather than short stories :p. I wrote the short story as an assignment in a science fiction creative writing class while in college. We were supposed to write one, but no matter how I tried to focus on the story I'd chosen (another synopsis as it turns out which is being shopped to agents as we speak), a monkey-like creature kept poling her raft through my dreams, waking or sleeping. I gave in and wrote the short story as well.
In 2002, I recognized Kyrnie for what it was and made a note in my tracking database "Convert to a novel." Even worse, this darn character was still haunting me without remorse, clearly saying I hadn't done the job well enough.
So, I put together a bare outline in August of 2003 and decided to do this as my first NANOWRIMO novel. That didn't last :p. In September, I started Kyrnie for the three day novel when I was already in the middle of another novel. I tried to work on both in September-October but it was a big flop. I shelved Kyrnie, raced through The Queen's Return in time for NaNo and wrote...well, the other novel synopsis from that class ;). NaNo exhausted me. I couldn't even think of writing until late January 2004. By February 7th, Kyrnie was complete at 109,000 words. I did a single edit pass and it grew to 114,259 but still wasn't polished. I posted the first few chapters on my crit group site and they were ripped apart, mostly deserved. I rewrote them and found a couple willing victims to read the whole thing in mid 2005. They came back with excellent feedback, including to reorder probably 30% of the scenes. I managed to do the work and the notes on my revised outline, but then collapsed. Before I could recover, real life intervened and Kyrnie ended up shelved once again.
So, if you're not yawning already, here's what this is all about. The thinking and scene movement is already complete, though the specific details remain to be seen. The plan is to follow the process I've already laid out on my outline and get the major changes done, then do a pass for coherency and finally seek more feedback (already agreed to). I'd love to see Kyrnie out the door this year, but honestly I think the chances are low. Despite being older than several of my novels, this is probably the most complex of any of them and the one that touches the heart of what I love to write the most. It's not an easy edit, but I think it will be a valuable one. I just hope it'll be an interesting process to watch :D.
Cheers,
Margaret
I plan to do something different this time and blog about the process of doing a late stage edit. So to start out, I'm going to offer up some history :).
The novel I'm about to edit now is called Kyrnie after the main character. It is a sociological science fiction novel about cultures clashing and forging new paths out of disaster. Hmm, guess it's got a premise after all ;).
This story first appeared as one of my earlier short stories back in 1989, the ones that were about 8k of story summary and I finally grew mature enough to recognize that I'd been writing long synopses rather than short stories :p. I wrote the short story as an assignment in a science fiction creative writing class while in college. We were supposed to write one, but no matter how I tried to focus on the story I'd chosen (another synopsis as it turns out which is being shopped to agents as we speak), a monkey-like creature kept poling her raft through my dreams, waking or sleeping. I gave in and wrote the short story as well.
In 2002, I recognized Kyrnie for what it was and made a note in my tracking database "Convert to a novel." Even worse, this darn character was still haunting me without remorse, clearly saying I hadn't done the job well enough.
So, I put together a bare outline in August of 2003 and decided to do this as my first NANOWRIMO novel. That didn't last :p. In September, I started Kyrnie for the three day novel when I was already in the middle of another novel. I tried to work on both in September-October but it was a big flop. I shelved Kyrnie, raced through The Queen's Return in time for NaNo and wrote...well, the other novel synopsis from that class ;). NaNo exhausted me. I couldn't even think of writing until late January 2004. By February 7th, Kyrnie was complete at 109,000 words. I did a single edit pass and it grew to 114,259 but still wasn't polished. I posted the first few chapters on my crit group site and they were ripped apart, mostly deserved. I rewrote them and found a couple willing victims to read the whole thing in mid 2005. They came back with excellent feedback, including to reorder probably 30% of the scenes. I managed to do the work and the notes on my revised outline, but then collapsed. Before I could recover, real life intervened and Kyrnie ended up shelved once again.
So, if you're not yawning already, here's what this is all about. The thinking and scene movement is already complete, though the specific details remain to be seen. The plan is to follow the process I've already laid out on my outline and get the major changes done, then do a pass for coherency and finally seek more feedback (already agreed to). I'd love to see Kyrnie out the door this year, but honestly I think the chances are low. Despite being older than several of my novels, this is probably the most complex of any of them and the one that touches the heart of what I love to write the most. It's not an easy edit, but I think it will be a valuable one. I just hope it'll be an interesting process to watch :D.
Cheers,
Margaret
