Lots of watering (OH IF ONLY IT WOULD RAIN), lots of weeding, quite a bit of tedious deadheading of the buddleias because I want them to keep blooming through September, and . . . to my surprise, I actually started my next project. I meant to take a break until today, but just kind of found myself in the mood for . . . manuscript revision! Who knew?
I’m also trying around the edges to come up with a decent title for this WIP, but for the moment I’ll just call it KEEPER, okay? Which I do not like at all as a title, but it’ll work for now as a tag.
What I’m doing with KEEPER is reducing one main character’s (Erest’s) role and also working on streamlining the plot. It’s tricky because I’m taking out big chunks and then having to work back in little tidbits of exposition so the reader will know what’s going on. Sometimes this means taking out all references to Various Plot Elements and making a mental note that those Plot Elements need to be introduced later. I have a pretty good memory for this sort of thing, but obviously at the end I will need to read back through the whole story to make sure everything flows and I didn’t miss anything.
My guess is my enthusiasm for this project will wane shortly. Sigh. At least interspersed with the hard parts I get the easy parts — reading through Oressa’s chapters, which hardly need to change at all.
Hopefully be done by the end of the month, despite dog shows and Archon. Then I’ll have to decide on another project, something brand new. So many choices! A sequel for House of Shadows (coming next spring)? A sequel for The Floating Islands? This extraordinarily cool thing I want to do based on an alternate pseudo-Ottoman Empire?
First step is still to finish this revision, though, so onward with that . . .