Wordcount = 94,768
The new banner image for this website indicates that it’s scissors-and-paste time — the editing of The Last Monk has begun.
There’s a kind of archaeology in the editing process. Having finished a rough first draft of The Last Monk about three weeks ago, I’ve spent much of the intervening time reading and re-reading the entire manuscript, picking out everything from typos and bad grammar, through inelegant sentence structure to the high-end narrative and character lines which should drive the book.
Because The Last Monk has taken five years to write, the first few chapters say a lot about what kind of writer I was and what I thought my book was about five years ago. Strangely, I have returned to and redrafted every chapter in the book, except Chapter One, which is mostly unchanged from the time, probably in late 2000, when I first wrote it.
Not surprisingly, it doesn’t fit any more. Anyone who has had to write a long essay or thesis learns that you write the introduction at the end, and the same theory applies to The Last Monk. The only chapter I need to substantially rewrite is Chapter One.
Thankfully, I’m happy with Chapter Two (you can read it in two parts, here and here), and Chapters Three and Four are even better. The novel comprises thirty-six chapters, of which seven require major work. By ‘major work’ I mean rethinking the structure of the chapter and/or the style and/or the length and/or the position of the chapter within the book and/or chucking the thing out altogether.
It sounds more drastic than it is. The fact that I’m broadly happy with twenty-nine chapters which have gone through not much more than one draft plus polish is a good sign, a sign with which I attempt to comfort myself as I dive into major revisions. Wish me luck.
3 Comments
good luck mat!
Hmmm… sounds like you need a dose of good hard discipline boy… less of this luck stuff
James, please don’t tempt me with a post like that, my double-entendre trigger finger is appallingly itchy. One more line like that and the whole website is going to turn into an episode from Are You Being Served.
Having said that, maybe Mrs Slocombe and her feline friend would liven the place up a bit. Maybe I’m not thinking this through.