Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!

As per my last blog entry, this was the sort of minor revising I was hoping for with this last read-through of the manuscript of KNAVE'S HONOR.











Sadly, this is what I wound up doing. At least for the first few chapters.

Mercifully, it got better after that. It got worse again at the end, but I was expecting that. I knew the point of view was all over the place in the final chapter (and oh, baby, it was!).

Now comes the literally painful part of inputting the changes onto the computer. My back aches because I sit for longer stretches, and I'm looking from the hard copy to the computer screen and back again.

Why can't I do this all on the computer? I just can't. I get all mixed up and confused, probably because I've always done the really serious editing on paper and I like to flip back and forth, if necessary. Also, I can do it in more comfortable, "reader-ish" (as opposed to "writer-ish") surroundings.

I'm also at the part where I feel like I'm carrying the whole book in my head or, as one author put it, as if it's all on the tip of my tongue. That can be good, because it means I know my manucript well enough to realize a paragraph I was going to cut from one chapter can work in another. However, it also means I can't remember a lot of details about real life at the moment. It's like I've only got so many brain cells, and right now, they're pretty much full.

So when I'm not sitting at the computer, I'm making a lot of lists.