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In process -- July 2014



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’t quite the taget 90,000, but it’s better than just cutting whole plotlines or something. Not that I could.

This is the plot revision draft. It’s much more logical than it was before, at least the way it looks in my head. I’ll let it “rise” for a few weeks, or maybe age or ferment (but not foment), and then read it again and I’ll know. 

Last night I opened the file just to clean up a revised outline, and it didn't look as genius as I'd thought, and I went through a pile of notes to see if I could throw any away (I could!) and found some good ideas that still need to be implemented. I'd like to get back to it, but I'd like to do a few other (small) things first. Short stories! They're like knitting socks. In that they always take far longer than I expect, being so small. 

Connecting
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Circulating
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Knitting

 “Kaffeklatsch” (self-designed).  Finished. It was a bit of a death march to the end.
“Ceremonial Armour” (Kaffe Fassett, knit from a photo). Three inches into the first sleeve, I had to make a chart to progress. So it sat for a couple of weeks until one evening I just did it (took about ten minutes, what with counting the stitches, looking at the previous chart, and doing some very rudimentary math). Looking at the colors, I’m not sure I like them, but whatever, I guess it will be so ugly it’s cute.
“St. Anthony’s Ribbon” (self-designed). Finished the first sleeve. Started the body. Fixed the edge chart. This is going to take a while.
Octopodes socks. Knitty Spring 2014. MC is leftovers from Tenney Park (knitty deep fall 2011), with some brown tweed Kroy for the contrast. It works surprisingly well. I was so sick of all those old projects, I just started these one day. The pattern was difficult to follow, or maybe error-riddled, or maybe I’m just not used to following patterns anymore. I'm a third of a cuff and a heel away from having the first one done.

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