And the rewrite is off...

to Steve P. for another look-over.

Added some more stuff to Part 3. It's better. Good enough? I don't know. I could tinker with it forever, but I feel like I'm at a point of diminishing returns.

Anyway I'm not going to mess with it until Steve gets back to me.

Update Mar 18: Steve approves the rewrite. (What would I do without him?) One more spellcheck and line-edit pass, and he's going to start helping me find an editor.

Rewrite finished

at least for now. I'm going to let it sit for a bit, then look it over one last time, probably in a week or so, certainly before the end of the month. Make any last tweaks I need to-- but I really think it's there.

I've posted a new word count in the sidebar. NB: this word count includes words like CHAPTER 26. Also, I did this word count completely in Open Office's Word doc format, which gives slightly different results than the Google Docs word counts I was using back in Nov/Dec. So all numbers should be considered approximate.

Still, I've written a pretty good chunk of new stuff. It's almost all in Part III, which is where it was needed.

Rewriting

Thought it was worth a note.

I'm pretty much done with the first two sections. No real "rewriting", there: editing to smooth out the flow of prose, spellchecking (aargh, nightmare!), fixing a couple of minor continuity points. Very little new material, and nothing removed (a word here, a phrase there).

Part III is going to be a different story. In fact, when I'm done with it it'll be a quite different story.

I started on it last night. The first half of Part III sees mostly minor changes on the same order as Parts I and II. I may expand some of the sequences where Akshedhen and Co. are dodging Locusts all over the plain; it still feels to me like that whole part takes much less time than Part II, which is supposed to be contemporaneous. Besides, there's potentially some good action in there.

But it's the second half, after A. gets to the Delta, that's really going to need work. I have to redefine A's emotional trajectory, extract genuine repentance, and make his willing support of the Delta convincing. To that end, I think I'm going to expand his visit to Ahon Sarkhamine and present him with a real choice, not a premade one.

Insh'allah, by the end of March, I'll be done with the rewrite. Then I'll run it by Steve P. one more time, and then...