The first pass of my novel edit is finished.

For anyone who is interested, this ‘two-pass’ system I’ve mentioned before works like so: The first pass is focused mostly on reading. This is particularly useful in the case of the novel (which I last read straight through nearly a year and a half ago), in that it makes the narrative fresh in my mind. I read out loud, partly to test dialogue for authenticity, partly because it forced me to actually pay attention to each word, and partly for another reason I’ll touch on later. Anything that stood out as awkward or a break in the flow, I marked, noting any suggested changes alongside the text. Anything that stood out as wrong, of course, I changed then and there.

The second pass will be going back to the yellow bits. I have a tendency, during edits, to stress over synonyms and phrasing and even punctuation. It is necessary, of course, but it is time consuming and it is disheartening. Hopefully I now have a road-map that tells me where it is worth putting that effort in.

So now I have a manuscript filled with yellow highlighting and parenthetical suggestions. Honestly there is less yellow than I had suspected. All in all, I’m very proud of what I’ve managed to do with this novel. The characters really are the most important for me, and the vehicle does most of them proud.

One thing that does occur to me, and it’s a hard one to catch in a technical edit, is that maybe it does better by the characters that are my favourites. Mind you, that means five out of seven main characters. There are no really standout moments for two of the characters, though I think they are characterised well. I could be wrong, people who end up fans of those characters might find plenty to enjoy, and certainly there are things that happen down the track that will vindicate them, but perhaps they need more page time or at least some dialogue tweaking here and there.

This is quite indicative of one of the reasons that the first pass is a good idea: reading every word out loud really gets the novel as a whole solidly in my short-term memory, and lets me see things from a broader perspective. As far as the character thing goes, I don’t really know that I can make a call here. I’ll need an external opinion for that one. In terms of the narrative, though, I feel that the order is spot on, and the pacing is too for the most part. Hopefully by the time all the yellow is gone it will be spot on too.

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So, let’s talk other writing stuff.There have been two additions to the website: It Rained and A Tale of Yores.These additions probably went unnoticed even by people who were paying attention due to failings in the current layout. The writing pages were never meant to stay as they are, but I’ve been tossing around various solutions to the problems as I see them and I think I finally have an answer. The problems are as follows:

• Stories need individual comment pages
• Stories need to be arranged by date, so that the newer stories are obvious.
• Some way of alerting people when I add a new story is needed.
• Some of my stories aren’t really stories. They are pieces of stories – some stay as single pieces, some gather other pieces around them.

The solution, as I see it, is to tweak this blog so it is more suitable and use it as the back-end for the site. I should be able to use tags to keep posts like this and the creative stuff apart, and to keep linked story pieces together, plus there is a perfectly serviceable comment system and RSS feed already here. I’ll have a go at fixing this as soon as I get the chance (I’m supposed to be working on my PhD right now), and the two stories I posted today will be the first on the new system, as they are most definitely pieces. There are other pieces hanging around for one of them, too.

This “pieces” thing is actually an end in itself, too, for I am forever coming up with little snippets that never get attached and never get read. I would like to add some new piece of writing here every day. At least a hundred words. I’m not going to claim a daily update schedule yet, I know that would be folly, but if I get it running and manage that for a while then I’ll try to make it a permanent thing. Watch this space.

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There was one more thing. I’ve been thinking about podcasting. I haven’t been thinking about podcasting because of podcasting, I’ve been thinking about podcasting because of Daniel Kitson. If you don’t know who he is, go see him the next time he’s in your town. What struck me the most after watching his two latest shows was not how funny he is (very), but that it was still possible to get up and tell a story. I look at how shows like Firefly get cancelled and shows like Big Brother are in their nth season and I sometimes despair that any significant proportion of people give a damn about stories or characters at all. And, let’s be honest, that’s probably the case. But if the stories are good enough, then there are people that care. Enough people that as unlikely a performer as Kitson is (No offense meant Daniel, if you happen to read this. I’m not saying you’re not a brilliant performer, I’m just saying I doubt your guidance counsellor predicted it.) he can tour the world on a regular basis, get up in front of sold out rooms of people and tell stories.

There are things that can be done with voice that cannot be done with written word alone, and vice versa. Part of the reason I read the novel out loud for editing was to see what it sounds like. It sounds pretty good. There is a part of me that is considering podcasting an audio version alongside the chapters as they are released online. There is another part of me that realises that if something is to be read aloud you should write it to be read aloud (Slithy Toves was written to be read aloud, if you were wondering). I’ve been experimenting a bit with that voice, and I think it’s something I can do. Hopefully something will come of it. Then, one day, maybe you’ll see me in front of a room full of people.