Celebration time! Despite the fact my office is currently hot enough to roast an author, I’ve just wrapped up the third draft of Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet. Final word count was 60,577, about 5,000 words more than the second draft. Some of that is due to the fact that I added little introductory recaps and a slightly rewritten version of the previous couple of paragraphs to the beginning of each chapter – just like the old serials that inspired the book. I’m not sure what readers will think of that but I like it. It took me about eighteen and a half hours to get through this third draft so I would imagine there’s at least another thirty hours of revisions left to go before I’m willing to call it quits. I’m a firm believer in the old saying – “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” I’m doing something new (for me) with this book, I’ve hired a professional editor for a full content edit. I have had critiques and copy editing done before, but never a full edit like this. I’ve just sent the manuscript off so I’ll be waiting (im)patiently for her to get back to me with her comments. In the meantime, I need to finish off the first draft of Leah and decide whether I’m going … Read More
Glitch – Draft Two Complete
I’ve just wrapped up the final tweaks on the second draft of Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet. This draft clocks in at 55,673 words which is quite a bit less than the first draft – mostly because I cut out a couple of chapters and a few big chunks that just didn’t work. I’m reasonably happy with this new version but it still needs another pass before it goes to an editor at the beginning of July. We’re heading out to Banff for the Banff Half Marathon tomorrow so I’ve printed it out and we’ll be taking it with us. My wife will read it and make some notes and then I’ll do the same. This is what it looks like printed out (I’ve gone for a smaller print size and margins to cut down on the amount of paper we’re carrying – probably a bad thing to do but we’ll see). If I’d thought ahead I probably could have found an app that would allow us to read and mark it up on our iPads instead. That would be much better. Should have thought of that before I started sacrificing trees. [Glitch – Draft Two Complete by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset … Read More
Feeling Drafty
I’ve just finished off the first draft of Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet (working title). The final word count is 65,228 – significantly more than the 10,000 words I’d originally planned. As always, there’s still plenty to do, including naming most of the characters. I wanted to put some extra thought into all of the names for this one so I ended up just putting [surname] or [mole-man] in place of actual names. When I start the revision process I’ll come up with a set of appropriate names. Before then, the story needs to sit and fester for a few weeks. In the meantime I’m going to wrap up the handful of unfinished stories I have sitting on my hard drive and start revising The Ghost Smuggler. I’m also going to try my hand at a script for a play based on The Z Word. [Feeling Drafty by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 28th December 2013]
The End of F Bomb
As promised, I finished the first draft of F Bomb last night. Two hundred and six minutes to write two thousand and seventy two words and I’m pretty happy with it. As always it now sits in the unfinished folder for a couple of weeks to let it ‘stew’. As well as finishing F Bomb, I created a folder for Novel Number 2 which from now on will be known as Uncanny Freaks. I won’t actually be starting on the novel for a couple of weeks yet so it’s largely a ceremonial step but it does give me somewhere to store the notes that I need to start making. I also moved an unfinished story into my abandoned folder. That makes unlucky thirteen stories in my abandoned. Some of them are just snippets of stories I wrote years ago. Others are almost complete tales that just didn’t work. Some of the ideas are good though, including the one I consigned to oblivion last night so I’ll be returning to it at some point – I’ll just be starting fresh. As well as the abandoned folder, I have a bunch of unsold stories that I like to read through every now and again. … Read More
87000
It turns out I was actually working on Draft Number Ten of The Ghost Smuggler, not number nine as I originally thought. Whichever number it was, I finished it yesterday morning after a final check of a couple of chapters I’d reworked – just to check flow and continuity. Some stats about Draft Number Ten. The manuscript is now 169 pages long (single spaced) and comes in at 87,000 words. Yes, exactly 87,000 – weird huh? The double spaced manuscript clocks in at 390 pages. Editing Draft Number Ten took 774 minutes (give or take an hour or so for random digressions onto the Internet) and overall I removed 447 words from the story. That’s probably a good thing. Next step is to send it off to Jeff VanderMeer who offers a critique service. I’m a fan of Jeff’s writing (in particular the ridiculously inventive Finch) so the opportunity for him to cast a critical eye over my manuscript was too good to pass up. I was a little concerned that my aging LaserJet would collapse under the strain of printing out the whole manuscript so I batched up the printing to make sure it survived. And survive it did, although I almost ran … Read More
Draft Number Nine
So, change of plan yesterday. What was going to be a start-a-new-story session turned into start-a-new-draft session. More specifically, start the ninth draft of The Ghost Smuggler. That’s not to suggest that each draft is a full-on heavy rewrite, the last few have been fairly minor tweaks and corrections. This time round I’m looking at the story again after several months away from it to see if there’s any more tweaks I want based on the things I’ve learned over the course of the year before I start sending it out. I’m also investigating the possibility of a professional critique so I want to make sure I have the cleanest manuscript I can for that. The problem is, I can always find something to change. I covered the first twenty one pages last night and made a fair number of revisions. Some of them were definitely improvements and fixes for typos – some of them…I’m not so sure. Overall, though, I think I’m making it better. Time will tell…