I spent today rewriting the opening chapter of APoS - Derry. First in red pen then inputting the changes to my laptop...then printing it out to do, again. It's amazing how tiring that can be. I'm trying to convince myself to move on and, as I go along and determine more changes that need to be done, add them as notes till I get into the next draft. That's very hard for me; I'm the sort of writer who rewrites his opening pages over and over and over as he slowly adds the rest of the story to them. It takes a long time, but I think it works better, overall.
I am going to treat this like 3 separate books, because this little beast is massive. I went through each file and came up with the following numbers:
- Book 1 -- Derry -- 418 pages and 95,559 words
- Book 2 -- New World for Old -- 480 pages and 106,910 words
- Book 3 -- Derry '81 -- 324 pages and 73,810 words
That's over 1200 double-spaced pages (in 12 point Courier) and more than 276,000 words. I am, quite honestly, overwhelmed at how much I've done on this, and still have more to add. Not huge amounts, but I'm still light on Bloody Sunday's massacre and some things need to be added so they can be referenced later, to give emotional content to episodes and actions.
I may start sounding out mainstream publishers and agents to see if that might be the better way to go. See if they might have an editor to work with me on this, like Hemingway had. Of course, that was Maxwell Perkins who knew a shitload about honing a story till it's just right. But at this moment, I'd be happy with anybody who could read it and point out places that are superfluous. Even after months of not touching it, I'm still too close to the story to be objective enough for that.
The curse of a writer...
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