Friday ramblings
Posted on | February 3, 2006 | 1 Comment
My agent read the first 37 chapters (280 pages) of Missing Persons yesterday, concentrating on the recent changes, and it’s thumbs up, full speed ahead, let’s get this thing wrapped up.
When I started this round of revisions, I foolishly turned off the Track Changes feature in Word, because sometimes I find it inhibiting to see all those red lines and strikeouts. Sometimes I compromise and adjust the settings so that deleted text isn’t shown at all, only the new material. When I sent him the manuscript section, I told him what I’d done and said I could “easily” do a compare documents to regenerate the changes if he wanted. So, that’s what he asked for, and I discovered to my chagrin how not-easy it turned out to be.
Everything was fine up to about page 140, and then something tripped the comparison algorithm up and absolutely everything after that point was marked as a change. Arrrgh. So I spent about an hour snipping the old and new versions into smaller segments and running the comparison on them. Occasionally I had to excise a paragraph that just frigged things up totally, no matter how small the segment. It was an arduous and tiresome process, so be warned if you ever consider doing the same thing! I finally managed to cobble together a document that had the text of the new version with all the changes from the previous version annotated, but I had the nagging feeling that it was all bollixed up. I guess not, but I don’t want to have to do that again any time soon.
I’m still tinkering with that new short story I mentioned last time, but I’ve bogged down on it, more for lack of time than inspiration. I have one major project that I hope to get off my plate again by tomorrow so I don’t have to think about it at all for a while. Then there’s the novel, of course, and the story. Some days I wish I could write full time, but most days I’m not sure I’d accomplish much more. I’d probably just spend more time doing the same amount of work.
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About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, which was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.
February 3rd, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
full speed ahead
Yay, Bev! That must be music to your ears…