I've been meaning to write a post about how the rewriting of
Jarthen Book I is going and now is as good a time as any. Mostly because I'm kind of stumped by it.
Here's what happened: Jon and I compiled Book I into a massive 270 page word document, reread and annotated it mercilessly, and then compared. When I was rereading it, I was trying to conserve as much as what we'd already written as I could, but when we touched base and started divvying up the sections, it became very clear very quickly that there were some really major changes that needed to happen. Characters were mercifully renamed with less retarded-sounding monikers. Some characters were dropped completely. Other characters were aged. A race of sentient beings was dropped since we weren't really using it. We made a really major revision regarding the central characters and POV. Dialects were made less impenetrable.
Jon's been tackling the Bertronius side of things and I've been working on the Jarthen side of it. I essentially rewrote the first half of the book from scratch. I think I used maybe about five pages total of text for the first seven or so chapters from the
stuff we've published over on the blog. The general storyline is the same and everything, but the tone was wrong and given all those aforementioned shifts it was really just easier to scrap it and start fresh. It was going pretty well for awhile there, I was clipping along and feeling good about it and I was totally on track to finish the rewrites by the end of the month, which is what we were shooting for. Looks like for the first time ever, Jon's going to make that deadline and I'm not. The shame.
And now I'm derailed. At first, I thought it was because the pirate book and this other book that came out of nowhere (more
City of Mages 2nd generation stuff) were sucking up my time and brainpower, but it's not really their fault. The reason those were easier to write was because I was slamming up against an invisible wall with the rewrites everytime I tried to work on them.
Yesterday, I finally caved and proposed a truly major change to Jon about it. One that I think might make more sense in the long run by sort of fundamentally undermines his initial conception of the Jarthenverse. He said he needed to sleep on it (that's how big it is). So, I guess I'll just wait it out and hope for the best, but either way I'm sort of screwed:
- Change is not made - still have to deal with the hurdles that have been derailing me, and likely will be plagued with doubts regarding said change for the rest of the books
- Change is made - sweet, things make more sense now! Except that I have to go back and rewrite substantial chunks of stuff that's already done.
Damn it.
