Monday 18 September 2023

The Ongoing Draft

 Well, I feel quite gobsmacked this morning and all the more determined to make this novel better than ever. Cara sent me the first half of her novel edits and I've had a quick look through this morning. It's really everything I dared hope it might be - important questions showing she totally gets the plot, suggestions that are going to really boost the quality and lots of useful observations and corrections. Quite a lot of it concerns parts I've already reworked, which will be interesting if I go through and compare her ideas with my revisions. I'm looking forward to it. Was very chuffed that she points out some of my favourite bits as hers too. Weird though, I always thought my ideal reader was an older gentleman. 

Friday, have managed four Musical Dice Game tracks in last few days, feels like a collection but maybe needing a hit single. 


Pat sneezes more than any other human being. Did MD12, which I think gives me quite a lot - actually 1 hour 40 mins of music to sift through. I started putting some ideas together in terms of running order - more thought required but the first version sounding good this morning (Sunday). Tim came round and we recorded that utterly fab Vesly, so that's a pleasant result - must've been ready for a good creative sesh. 

This morning I had a very trippy experience listening to playback of a musical dice piece on the laptop while listening to another (or maybe the same one at a different point) on speakers. Some very cool potential there, may try and import all 12 into the 404 and try playing them against each other from there. Upset Pat by suggesting two nights would be a good maximum for Will at half term. 

Cara has scored a blinder in some of the edit comments lately. For example, there was the mystery of the blank chapter (46) and then a couple of questions showed where I'd really not given readers a genuine chance to follow some threads. All it then took was to move  and expand a short paragraph, making it into chapter 46 which occurred at exactly the right point and seemed like I'd planned it. Maybe I did but didn't know it. Anyway, I am now working through a difficulty at the end of chapter 50 that I'd deliberately dismissed so I could do a surprise later but now realise it needs more work. Makes me think the older books all needed this degree of outside help to get them over that final threshold. 

Phew!


Pat's suposed to be going south at the weekend,not sure if Friday but saturday for sure. Erland Cooper on Sunday so all in all a weekend to look forward to.

No comments:

Post a Comment