January 2, 2016

10 things I learned from shrinking 3 books into 1

All of this shrinking was done by Sarah, of course. She wrote a wonderful post about it. When she was finished with the manuscript, she sent it to me. I read it and sent it back with comments and fixes, and Sarah sent new fixes to me, and I sent her more comments and fixes, and so on. But they were minor. And in the process of reading and rereading the new condensed story and comparing it to the original trilogy I have learned a great deal about story structure and maybe even glimpsed how writers adapt their novels to screenplays.

Let me tell you, it's like milking a wild lioness that can crush your head open as a ripe walnut. Better don't attempt it at home alone, unless you know what you're doing. And better yet, have a good reason to do it, as it seems old books rather like to be left alone. It's very tempting to try and convert them to your current writing style, which I almost did. Thank God Sarah slapped my hands and stopped me. At the present moment the clean final FINAL copy of Siren Suicides graces my Inbox and I will get to reading it as soon as I'm done reading TUBE, Draft 2. Then Royce will proofread it one more time, just in case we missed something, and off it goes to Stuart for formatting.

Well then. Here are the 10 things I have learned from this process.

December 23, 2015

New Siren Suicides cover reveal!

by Ksenia Anske

It's here! It's here! I know you've been waiting for it. I've been waiting for it, too. There is, however, more waiting involved before the second edition of Siren Suicides gets published. The prepping of the cover for publication is something that requires time, and I'm waiting for Anna to finalize it. I'm also waiting for Sarah to send me yet another version of the manuscript with her comments on top of my comments on top of her comments. Just so we have the final one. Once that is done, I will send off both the manuscript and the cover to Stuart for formatting and then I will be waiting for Stuart to make it happen.

ANNA AND SARAH AND STUART ARE SQUEEZING THIS WORK INTO BUSY SCHEDULES.

December 6, 2015

Why editing is so damn hard

by Ksenia Anske

This post is dedicated to all editors out there, the magnificent people who have the talent to shape the fragile mess of words they receive from writers into something beautiful and yet still FUCKING FRAGILE AND MESSY the way it originally was. And when you look at it, at what they do, you scratch your head and wonder how the hell they do it. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you take it for granted. I know I did. Until last week. I thought, "Hey, that's what they're good at. That's what editors do. It's their job." I didn't know how hard it was until I tried it on my own.

This week I have received from Sarah the final condensed manuscript for Siren Suicides. What she did was squeeze 3 books (262K words) into 1 book (88K words) by doing magic cutting and stitching and reorganizing and yet keeping the story intact. I was elated. I dug into reading it as soon as I could. And guess what happened. I got so disgusted with my old writing that at first I rewrote a sentence. Then a paragraph. Then a whole page. Then I ended up spending a whole day on rewriting 6 first pages by mercilessly lopping off chunks of descriptions and dialogue and exposition and just plain butchering the thing till what I had left was clean gleaming bones. I polished the bones somewhat. When they were shining I was satisfied at last. I intended to do the same for the rest of the thing which at the rate of 6 pages a day would've taken me 55 days to finish which would've put my writing schedule on hold and instead of starting TUBE, Draft 3 in January I would've started it in March. I got gloomy thoughts on shooting myself with a Kalashnikov because, frankly, I didn't want to do this. I'm good at making myself do things I don't like, BUT I AM SO DONE WITH THIS STORY I DON'T WANT TO TOUCH IT.