Clee Hill: Blog

Just a quick note to let those who read these things know that Chapter 9 might be a few days late.

Basically, real life is badly distracting at the moment, my Muse has decided to hide until it all quiets down, and I'm struggling to hear my characters clearly.

So please, bear with me, it will be out soon, but not until it's ready.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, too.

CH

Remember I had planned to move to a fortnightly instead of a three-weekly posting schema?

Well, that kind of fell on its face for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, as I get further into my first drafts I am finding that, now that I know and understand my characters better, there is an increasing amount of those later chapters which are needing heavy re-writing. Think something in the range of thirty percent, and you'll be at the shallow-end in terms of what needs doing. So, that's a drag on productivity.

Secondly, two weeks is not giving me enough thinking time, meaning that important aspects of the narrative and character development are too often remembered at the last minute, putting more pressure on me to hit my self-determined posting schedule.

Thirdly, churning out chapters every two weeks is cutting into, what's that thing, oh yeah, real life. I love writing, but I don't only write, and some of those other things are big bites of my time too.

Conclusion. Back to three weeks. If I'm happy there's nothing more to do with a chapter then it will get uploaded quicker than that, but that's more hopeful than likely. The upside of this is that a happier writer should make for a better quality story.

Cheers...CH

To all those readers who spot goofs, slip-ups, and other grammatical and linguistic incoherencies and bring them to my attention so that I can fix them, please accept my humble thanks.

Maddeningly, because I can always find one way or another to revise a text, I run so close to my personal deadlines in terms of editing and proofing that there isn't really any way I could get an editor in to over-look my work and still hit those deadlines.

This, then, leaves me in the difficult position of being my own proof-reader, never the best role for the writer to be in, as I often read what I had intended or what I remember rather than what is on the screen in front of me.

When the chapters were shorter than the more recent ones, this wasn't such a problem as I could parse a text in a few hours. However, with recent chapters getting longer and longer - partly an authorial indulgence as I enjoy having Luke and Stef running around in my head, as well as those characters and events still to come - the number of goofs is steadily increasing. Thankfully it is nowhere close to becoming something that throws the reader out of the text, but it is frustrating to me.

Consequently, at least for the next chapter, I shall try working the text in sections rather than as one humungous document, and see if that reduces the goof rate. When those sections are complete, I shall then bolt them back together when it comes time to upload the next day's events. Given that there is a certain timetable of what happens over the course of the three weeks or so that cover Book One, I don't really see how it would work if I were to upload those sections individually, as each day is meant to have its own impact, both in terms of plot and also character.

We'll see.

CH

This fortnight's new chapter just went into the submissions queue, so my same request as always: if anyone spots a goof, let me know and I'll post a fix as soon as I can.

This is an interesting chapter, in that Luke's weird little Thing gives up one of its secrets, but in the process makes things more confusing for him too.

Also, after a little internal debating, I decided to flip on the 'voyeurism' tag, not for what is watched, but for how much someone enjoys listening. Would that make it 'aureurism'?

Anyhoo, it's another big read, lots of wordplay, plenty of interactions between Luke and Stef, and more of a presence from the parents too, but not like that.

Cheers...CH

This chapter has been an interesting combination of fun and hard work.

The hard work part is simply that when I wrote the original first draft of these chapters, this chapter really only served one plot purpose, and so the word count was just under 1,900.

Much too Brief.

So, heading back in for what was almost a version 1.5 of the text, I got to have a load of fun adding in a lot more plot, move a plot point up by a day, and mess around with my favourite characters, sprinkling a little humour along the way.

I'm also, partially due to feedback but also due to awareness of cliches and conventions, have not only added in a lot more of the parents, but am also making sure the Mum is not the all-knowing Mum and Dad is not the clueless-one of yore.

The next pass through the text will be the heavy lifting in terms of smoothing all those new elements out, after which there'll be the usual language, spelling, and grammar pass to make sure everything sounds right.

All things being equal, this chapter should upload on schedule on Sunday.

And that 1,900 words? Now clocking 15,000.

CH