There is no real joy in rewriting. I wish I could take pleasure in it.

It takes what is always an iffy proposition--that spending many hours every day on an activity that few if any are ever going to see is a worthy, smart thing to do. At least with writing there is the sense of discovery, the joy in ideas. In rewriting, it's pretty much all brain.

But...I have a book. I have finished "Faerylander," and this is the version I'm going to publish. I think it works, and I'm happy with it.

I'm going to spend the next couple of days going through it, trying to pick up any inconsistencies and copy-errors. There are probably tons of the later because 3/4 of the book was changed from 3rd person to 1st person and no matter how many times I go over it, I will miss some "he's" and "his's.

Then I'm going to start in on "Zombielander," giving myself twice as much time because it is bigger mess, but I think there is a book there.

Then on to the third book, "Cthulhulander," which will be a completely new book, which you'd think would be harder but will ironically probably be easier.

Then rewriting again on "Wolflander" and "Ghostlander," making them consistent with the first 3 books.

Lots of work.

I will really need to go off in a completely fresh direction after that...


I have the new covers back to "Star Axe" and soon with "Snowcastles/Icetowers." But I'm far from finished adapting the scans. If rewriting is hard, this is pure drudgery and I have a very hard time doing it.

But again, with a modest effort I free up a couple of books, which are already written and ready to go.

Just trying to take care of business and still keep up my enthusiasm for it all.

The conversion of the ending has gone smoother than I expected.

There is still a lot of clunky writing, but I'm trying to fix that as I go along. I have become a much better writer over the last 3 years.

In the process, I've cut a good 5000 words. I could probably could cut a few thousand more. I'm hoping by the time I add the Cobb's Bestiary entries in that it will push the book back up over 60K words. If not, I may have to do some adding. I'm thinking about adding in Tolkien and the Holocaust writer. It will mean shooting my bolt on "Famous writers" but if Faerylander doesn't work, nothing that follows will matter that much.

So...yeah, I'm going to do it. 

I think this book is now consistent in story and tone and character. Now I need to move on and do the next book, and hopefully have both done by the end of the month. Send them to Lara, and give myself some time to write the 3rd book, and then...when they come back, give them one last rewrite.

Huge effort, but it does create five books (freeing up books 4 and 5 which couldn't be published without the previous volumes.)

So it's worth it.

Couldn't quite get to the end. Still have to do the last two chapters. It's going to end up almost exactly 60K words. If I cut more, than add the Bestiary, it should come in just right.

Amazing how simply cutting out what doesn't work can actually fit. Very little new stuff needs to be written, actually.


Reading last night about what Lucas did wrong with SW 2nd III. Talked about having a "theme."

Nowadays, every book I write does have a theme. But when I started writing Faerylander, I didn't think that way.

The other thing that happened to Faerylander is that I hadn't learned yet to tell the story through scenes.

So there's this Curse, see. Whenever Cobb uses magic in his Exile, the Curse takes away his memory. Drinking causes him to lose control. Therefore drinking + magic = curse.

So simple enough. Except that's pretty much exactly the way it is introduced in the story.

Nowadays I'd have a scene illustrating the Curse. Cobb gets drunk, uses his magic, forgets where he is. Simple, illustrative, interesting.

(In fact, now that I mention it, I'm going to try to figure out a way to do exactly that.)

Anyway, this is just one example among many. Part of it is that Fantasy stories have world-building, and yet I write without doing the preliminary. In fact, I discover the world through writing. Which leads me into traps that are hard to extricate myself from.

When I write in the "real" world, the assumptions are all there. No explanation required. Which is why I'm more comfortable these days to write in the real world with a fantasy overlay. Even Faerie Punk, which has quite a bit of world building, is oriented primarily in the real world so I don't have to slow down and explain.

Rewrote Faerylander's first penultimate chapter yesterday, the one I was worried about.

I had to steal a scene from the second book, which I didn't want to do, but the book needs what the book needs. I can write a similar but different scene when the time comes.

There is one more penultimate chapter, which is one of the silly ones. That is, this chapter matches the tone of the early book where I'm making up Faery creatures willy nilly.

Hey, if the reader isn't along for the ride by now, I'm doomed anyway. The silly stuff, the little Faery creatures I make up, are baked into the book and just require a suspension of disbelief.

Then onto the final chapters, which can play out pretty much the way I originally wrote them, except I have a major character that comes in and helps Cobb against the Old God who has to be taken out. Cobb has to fight the Old God on his own--which is probably a better result anyway.

I should have a couple more days to go over it a couple more times, adding and subtracting from the various versions I've done. The whole thing should take about 10 days.

Hard work, but worth it if I come out with a readable book.

Basically, I've pulled the story in, keeping it lighter, more focused on the characters, without most of the apocalyptic stuff. That is, the danger in the book is to the specific characters, and only vaguely to the world at large.

The second book is darker, where the dangers becomes broader.

And the third book will be full out apocalyptic, which should be a satisfying story arc.

The second book has about 50K words already. I more or less have to write a few middle chapters, but it will be somewhat complicated. Hopefully another 10 days or so.

Then on to writing the third book, which might be kind fun. It will take three or four times longer than a rewrite and yet it will feel easier, I can almost guarantee.

The fourth and fifth books are written--all but the ending of Ghostlander--but I'll need to go through them and match the details from the three part Cthulhu versus Faery Wars.

This whole process just isn't much fun. I mean, there is a deep satisfaction to it, but not a joy.

But it has to be done.

Faerylander is still a learning book for me. After rewriting it 5 times, (35 variations!) I know the book inside and out. I've experimented with various styles and tones and structures.

I've learned a lot.

When I first started writing it, it was kind of snarky, almost satire. The main protagonist, Cobb, was a Faery creature exiled on earth who made snarky remarks about humans. But within a couple chapters I realized that wasn't what I wanted to do.

"Satire is what dies on Saturday night," said the playwright George S. Kaufman.

I don't personally care for humorous books. They have no internal tension and are carried only by their cleverness, and I get sick of too much cleverness. Even when it is well done, it is hard to maintain any narrative drive. Nor am I that relentlessly clever.

I've just stopped reading my second Carl Hiaasen book in a row. He's funny, but the tone just evaporates the story. Don't think badly of me, but I feel the same way about Hitchhiker's Guide and Terry Pratchett and most other writers whose main focus is on humor.

So if I don't like it and I don't read it, why was I trying to write it?

But I kept the light tone and I liked a lot of my inventions. I realized it was somewhat sophomoric, and perhaps even stupid, but I was enjoying it. I figured I could fix that.

But then I got to the last third of the book, and it went completely stupid. Here I have a war between Faery and Cthulhu, with humans caught in the middle, which I thought was fairly clever, but... the way I resolve it is with a gunfight?

It just didn't work.

I mean, the first two thirds would have worked if there was a more serious ending, or vice verse, but not together.

So I set about shoring it up, making the first two thirds more weighty. It did help with the last third, but it lost a lot of its original charm. All the cute but goofy stuff was taken out.

So on this last rewrite I've realized I can keep the lighter tone of the original book if I lose the stupid last third and go directly to the original ending. Works rather well.

Meanwhile, take the much more serious tone and use those chapters for the second book, and use it with the gunfight, and that also works.

Just requires lots of changes and transitions, but I do think the story is vastly improved by being split up.

So the first book is a little silly, admittedly. And the second book still has the gunfight. But both work better surrounded by other material.

The biggest problem is resolving the small inconsistencies of 35 versions, which I'm constantly finding.

Sigh.

I'm halfway through the rewrite of Faerylander and I think it's better in several ways. It's more consistent in tone, the characters are better developed, it has a cleaner plotline, the backstory has been completely thought out, and the writing is pretty polished.

It still moves more sideways than I like, with lots and lots of set up, which isn't the way I write now. I'm much more straight to the ending nowadays.

I can't judge how good it is at all. Just too many times through the meatgrinder.

But I will say this. It is immensely satisfying. Whether anyone else like it, I'm pretty happy with the way it is turning out, so that a good thing.

Don't know why this book is so important to me--it's not just that it is my first book when I returned to writing. Several of my early books have been put on the backburner. Truth is, it took a while to get back in the swing of things. I came at this from a "writerly" attitude instead of a "story-telling" attitude, and it shows. It took five rewriting sessions to get the story preeminent again.

But I think it is close to there.

This is hard work, but I think I'm coming up with a version Faerylander that is consistent in tone. The structural problems are always going to be there since they were there at the beginning, but I can ameliorate the problem with better writing.

I finally found a version among the previous rewrites where I like the writing slightly better than the others -- just a random version in the middle of all the writing. But I think I'm going to be using it as my touchstone from here on.

I'm getting it done. It will require yet another rewrite, but at least I'll have the basic book in place. This has to be the version I go with. There is no sense shuffling the chapters around endlessly. Find a version and stick with it and make the writing as polished as possible.

It's clear that I tried to jam too much plot and characters into one book, and to do that, I cut too much of the little stuff that makes a book. This helps the book breath a little. 

I'm noticing the characters are coming alive for me more and more, so I think rather than wait to do a rewrite, I'll do it immediately and try to impart my sense of who these characters are.

I hate to pay my editor the 3rd or 4th time for the same story--crazy spending--but this is such a amalgamation of different versions, it's bound to have inconsistencies. Maybe I can talk Lara into just doing a copy-edit/consistency version for slightly cheaper. (Though I know she's already giving me a deal.)

On my walk yesterday without my computer I came up with dozens of embellishments, which I tried to remember to write down when I got to the car. I guess I need to take my computer with me every time.

I don't know why this book has captures me so often. There is just something about it. First love?

Did some calculating on my walk the day before yesterday and figured out it will take most of the rest of the year to clear away the backlog from the stories I've already started.

So rather than initiating a new project, I'm going to try to deal with what I've already started. However--there is a big caveat to that. If I have an idea that really excites me, I'll still indulge. That impulse has worked for me so far.

"I Live Among You" is an interesting example of that. I wrote it on a lark on Write a Book month, and it came out really well, and painlessly. It's a fun read. I could probably do this kind of story just about any time, if I wanted to--and weirdly enough, it would take less time than going back and fixing one of my previous stories.

Nevertheless, I don't want all that effort to go to waste. The saving grace of the rewrite is--it does improve the story, and there is already content that can be embellished.

For instance, I have felt one of my weaknesses is world-building. I sort of wing it, which sometimes works, but sometimes doesn't. I now have a complete world in the "Lander series," and so the amount of time it will take to get the 5 books (5!) ready seems to be worth it.

I don't want to get discouraged or bogged down, though. I want to maintain my enthusiasm for writing.

But in clearing away the backlog, there should be plenty of opportunities to be creative. For instance, 17K words into the rewrite of "Faerylander," I needed to write a new chapter. So I wrote it on my walk yesterday and it was very satisfying. As long as I get enough chances to write new stuff, I think I can stick to the discipline.

The second book of the Landers series, "Zombielander," will need to be 1/3rd fresh, and the third book," Cthulhulander" will be all new.

I have the second half of "Tuskers IV" to write, the second half of "Devil's Forge." All that should give me inspiration. And as part of the backlog, so to speak, I want to write another Virginia Reed novel this year.

So it looks like it will be about half and half, new book, old book, new book, old book. There are several books I don't intend to try to deal with for now. As soon as I've got this backlog done, I'll set off on another fresh round of writing, and when that winds down, then I'll go back to my even earlier books (Sometimes a Dragon, The Reluctant Wizard, Spell Realm, The Odyssey of Linger Longfellow) and try to do something with those.

I'm going to have a lot of books in my "Vault" if I can accomplish this. At some point, I'll just start putting them out, one by one, every two or three months. Heh.