Polishing to a shine

Do you ever get yourself in a knot with all the drafts of your wip? I do. Early on in this game, I used to get myself in a panic, thinking I'd deleted the wrong version, but never actually did that.
Now I take a more measured view.  Instead of spending time comparing one version with another, which I suspect is, 9 times out of 10, a waste of time, I look at the dates, check the word count and then force myself to delete the oldest, assuming that the newest draft is the best one. So far, I have not had cause to regret this.

My oldest version of Capture a Queen dates from September 2010, when it had the title Treason until someone pointed out what Matho was doing wasn't exactly treason. It was a complete version. I finished Treason and then went straight on to volume 2, completed it and started volume 3. Alas, I did not finish that volume. I hit a difficult plot spot and decided I'd take a break from volume 3 and go back to volume 1 and read it over again. That was March this year. Since then, I've been working on what at various points was Treason, then King's Business and finally Capture a Queen, and it is amazing the changes I've made.

I see now where my writing was not as graceful as it could have been. Two sentences, sometimes three, have been pared down to one and that one more graceful than the originals. I've removed the dreaded Superfluous Words and inserted better, more descriptive verbs. Some dodgy plot points have been smoothed or changed or even moved to a different part of the story.
I am calling this stage polishing, for that is what it feels like. Buffing the story to a real shine, ready to send out.

The joy of titles

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Cold weather starting to bite now. Down to minus 6 Centigrade in Yorkshire overnight, and we weren't far behind. Today it is raining, my least favourite winter weather. Damp and cold. Ugh.
Time to be indoors snuggling up to my computer and thinking of travelling through France in the summer of 1544 with my trusty hero.
I'm thinking of sending out a new partial sub. for Matho One even though it's only a few days to Christmas. The literary agents can't be at parties all the time, and surely most authors have better things to do than submit to agents at this time of year? Maybe my sub. will sneak in and catch people by surprise when they're in a good mood and with time on their hands!
I tentatively titled this story Treason, but as someone pointed out, Matho may not actually be committing treason simply because he crosses the border from England into Scotland. As a foreign national, what he sets out to do in Scotland is more properly an act of war. So I'm back to no title again.

Soft landing required

Choose the right option and you could be a student living in Durham Castle above the River Wear. I couldn't get in because I hadn't studied Latin, which was deemed necessary for the English Lit course I wanted to do, but that was quite a while ago and may not apply now.

I sent off a full ms for Treason today, with fingers crossed as usual. Let's hope it receives a soft landing ~ as in We Love It!

I thought Shadows was going to on the website today, but it looks as if there's a hitch, because I haven't found it yet, and even if New York is 5 hours behind me ... Duh! Arizona is possibly 8 hours behind, so that means it's only noon there. Incredible, isn't it? Especially when I think that Australia is already trotting out into tomorrow. Perhaps I should be patient a little while longer; it may yet appear.

I regret clicking the button to change to Internet 9. It may be me, but there are so many things I now find difficult to do that were easy-peasy in IE8. For example, I cannot go back, highlight Shadows and change the font to italic. It simply will not do it. Today I couldn't use red font in an e-mail. Simple things, nothing extraordinary but so annoying. Working on this blog in IE9 is a real pain. Ah well. Maybe it is me, and all will become clear in time. There's probably some dinky little button somewhere I haven't clicked, but I'm danged if I can find it. Even the usual save and delete options have vanished.

Are you being funny?

Soon the bluebells will be gone, but I've caught some wonderful sights this year. This patch, tucked away at the back of the formal gardens at Seaton Delavel, is just one of them.

The snow last winter resulted in so much glorious blossom this Spring, its just a pity that the wind has been so strong this last ten days or so that walking or cycling has been unpleasant. As far as fitness goes, that's not a problem, because we have an indoor exercise bike, and I can remember some step sequence exercises. Still, I miss the walks through the woods, fields and hedgerows.

Being indoors has resulted in lots of work on writing. I'm currently reading through Treason, to see what I think of it after a year away from it. Tweaking is mostly a case of removing odd bits of repetition, padding or bits I like but have little or no relevance to the plot. Only another fifty pages to go and then it'll be perfect - cue hollow laughter.

I've been reading Haze Osmond's blog this morning. She's talking about writing humour, which is something I'd find terribly difficult to do. Inadvertant humour is my forte; if I had to stop and think about it, I'd be lost. Hazel wonders when humour crosses the line and becomes cruel, a line that all writers must tread warily. If your writing is comedic, take a peek and see what you think: http://hazelosmond.co.uk/page7.htm