Another Daily WTF article up: “SELECTing Valid SQL.” I used up my single Joss Whedon reference card this time, yet I’m also getting flack for including a Lord of the Rings reference as well. Such is life.
I finished my rewrite of The Red Flood last Saturday. I started in early February; overall, I estimate I took 45 days, working 2 hours each day. Besides a couple of substantial storyline changes, I also cleaned up a lot of the action and did some line editing. It’s turning into a proper novel, and while it’s not the most ambitious at 55,000 words, it’s the tightest story I’ve written so far.
I don’t feel done at all. There’s a brief moment of relief after you type the last word of a rough draft, or correct the last red-inked mark, when you feel a release. It doesn’t last long. There’s always the next draft, the reader feedback, the manuscript preparation, the query letter writing, the agent hunting, and the endless waiting. Even if a publisher picks it up, there’s the editorial notes, more revisions, galleys to proof, and months of promotion. A book is never done until you’re dead.
While I wait for feedback from my beta readers (there’s room for more!), I’ll be catching up on my reading, rewriting a couple of short stories I haven’t touched in several months, and working on some blog posts.
After reading the comprehensive Goddesses of Water and Sky, I’ve decided to pursue that series on the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga. That book didn’t cover the series, as it is only concerned with Miyazaki’s film career. I keep returning to that story like a miner to a vein, yet too enraptured to chip anything away.