Author: Jason Penney

Mentioned on ‘I Should Be Writing’

I thought I had posted this at the time, but apparently I didn’t.

My One Pass Revision effort was mentioned on Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing (show #41, June 17, 2006). Thanks to Mur for keeping me honest in front of a larger audience.

If you haven’t heard it before, you really ought to check it out.

One Pass Revision: Day 7 (144/563)

Manuscript Slog Page Count
144/563

Took a while to get started this morning, but once I got going things went well. I think I’m going to have some scene re-ordering to do, but I’m going to ignore that (mostly) until after the type in. I’m probably breaking the One Pass process a bit with that, but it’s what I feel I need to do.

The plan is to eat lunch, help bathe the kids, and then get back to this. We’ll see!

I’m Back

I’ve spent almost all of my time since my last post getting ready for, traveling to and from, or participating in Jon and Nicole’s Wedding. Jon’s been one of my best friends for twenty years. I was honored to be asked to participate. The ceremony was amazing (if a bit hot), and the reception was a lot of fun. It was great to see some people I haven’t seen in some time (including Jon’s family), and meet some really fun new people. I even managed to give my toast without choking too badly. I wish Jon and Nicole the very best, and hope they’re having a great time on their honeymoon.

The drive there took forever, but coming back things at least kept moving. Denise and I listened to the amazing unabridged reading of Ender’s Game (I’d heard it before, but it’s great to be able to enjoy a good book with your wife). The full-cast unabridged readings of the Enderverse books are some of the greatest audiobook productions I’ve ever experienced. I can’t recommend them highly enough (available for download from audible.com as well).

I need to thank my Dad for spoiling… er… taking care of the kids while we were gone. I also need to thank Edna and my grandparents for helping him survive the experience.

Now it’s time to clean the desk off (it got a bit cluttered during the search for the GPS serial cable), and get back to work on the book.

One Pass Revision: Day 6 (Belated)

Manuscript Slog Page Count
118/563

This is actually my post for Tuesday. I should have posted it that morning, but I had every intention of getting more done. Since then we’ve had a few power failures and other fun time black holes. The systems are UPS protected now, but it took two days to get everything working again.

We’ve got a really busy weekend coming up, and lot’s to get done before then, so that’s probably it until next Tuesday. I’m pretty frustrated about it because I wanted to be done the read through by next Friday (along with a number of other commitments I’ve made). After that my schedule is going to get really nuts. Finding time for anything is going to be tough.

Bah. I’m going to bed.

One Pass Revision: Day 5

Manuscript Slog Page Count
98/563

Reached the end of Chapter 5 (not that the existing chapter breaks are going to mean much of anything). I’m surprised how easy it is to brutally remove entire scenes, ones I loved when I wrote them, and replace them with a single line somewhere else. Some of the POV adjustments are a bit more time consuming.

I hope to get back to this today, but I’ve got a lot of other stuff to get done, so no promises.

One Pass Revision: Day 3, Part 2 (55/563)

Manuscript Slog Page Count
55/563

Nothing went at all to plan today, but I got a bit more done.

Chapters 3 and 4 have a number of POV characters. I didn’t head hop within scenes, but I did change characters at scene breaks. I don’t think it’s at all confusing. I had considered rewriting each chapter as a single POV, but I’m not sure I can unless I want to have some very short chapters, or I can come up with some very interesting new material. Chapter 2 was the same way, but I was able to easily reassign the scenes to other characters and make an even split between two of them.

I’m going to push on and hope for the best. I’ll keep trying for single POV per chapter and if it works out everywhere else I’ll have to come back to this stuff. I’ll just make a note in the notebook for now.

One Pass Revision: Day 3 (46/563)

Manuscript Slog Page Count
46/563

Had a really busy weekend, but I finally was able to get some time in tonight… err.. this morning. Fairly heavy rewrites. Changed the point of view on a number of scenes. I removed a few scenes and was able to replace them with only a sentence or two in a later scene. I like some of the stuff I cut, but it really didn’t fit anymore. I wrote a few new scenes as well. I’ll need to review them before moving on, but I’m too tired to do that right now.

One Pass Revision: Day 2 (38/563)

Manuscript Slog Page Count
38/563

I’m going to try and post progress any time I work on the revision. I’ll also put the current page count. I only had a bit of time, but I made some more progress on Chapter 2 today. I had to stop to get other stuff done, but I need to roll some potential changes around in my head.

There’s a great cliffhanger in the middle of Chapter 2. Chapter 2 is too long. It doesn’t have enough material to be split as is (especially since I’m cutting left and right), but I think I see an opportunity to flesh out another important character sooner rather than later.

I doubt I’ll get back to it until at least Sunday, but it’ll be bouncing around my head until then. I’m actually excited about the story again, which is great.