Robynettely

“Tenth of December: Stories” by George Saunders. I read it on the subway, giggling. People kept moving away from me but whatever. Delightful. I went back and read some of the stories twice, to feel why they worked. “Thieftaker” by D.B. Jackson. I’ve known about this series for a while, maybe even since before it came out. The author must have used to be part of a group blog I used to read. With my current Puritan New England project, I’m curious what other people do with it. Though this takes place a bit later than WWS, and the magic is different, etc. It has thriller pacing, so it didn’t last long. The only thing that annoyed me was I suppose the author’s style – he didn’t use past perfect where I would have. If I didn’t want to use past perfect I probably would have found away to write the sections differently. More descriptions of characters than I normally do, but that might be my flaw, not his. “Steles of the Sky” by Elizabeth Bear. Book 3! So what to sa...

First Draft “ Limering ”. Around 74,000 words.  Trying to wrap things up. Editing “Wind/Water/Salt”. The end really needed a lot of attention. I deleted more words in the last quarter than in the other three quarters combined, I bet. Things seemed adrift, and like I just wanted the first draft to be over, kind of like the second. Which isn’t a good sign, perhaps. Some stats: I started this process with a full read-through of the first draft in January, pen in hand. I began actually editing in February, so the second draft took six months. The first draft ended with 48 chapters, and the second has 45 chapters, even though the second-last chapter got divided in three. The second draft is over 13,000 words shorter than the first, clocking in at 143,139 words, a loss of 8.4%. That’s not quite the 10% I was hoping for, but there are probably three drafts to go (hopefully they won’t take as long) and if I lose 8.4% each time, well, that takes me down to 110,085, which isn’...