Hi. Long time no post. Howâs everyone doing? Surviving whatâs left of 2023? I hope so.
Anyway, before 2024 starts, I thought Iâd break down 1) where Iâve been and 2) what Iâve been up to. This update is now 3 months overdue after all.
Whatâs Been Going On
So, the last time I posted an update was April. I was firmly in âAct 2/3 territoryâ back then, so where does that leave me? Donât worry, I wonât drag out the reveal.
As of September 27th, draft 3 of The Case of the Crawling Shadows is done. We all have read over the book, and are at a point where we're ready to share it with people.
I can't overstate how happy I am about it - we've been working at this thing since April 2022, and we're finally here. We can start talking about publishing this thing. I CAN SHOW PEOPLE THE BOOK.
Back in September, I intended to do a post about it. There's a draft announcement saved on my computer somewhere for that purpose.
I remember reaching the end of the book, and then scrolling back to the top as I usually do. I didn't find any outstanding comments, or weird spelling/grammar, or even a sentence I thought looked funky. As I read through, searching for weak points, none materialised. I was happy with the book.
It was the weirdest feeling, almost melancholy. For those of you who don't know, I've never finished a novel before. Starting them isn't a problem, but I tend to keep going and just...abandon them. This was a first. I enjoy writing, and it was a bit sad to not be writing this story that consumed a large portion of my life any more.
So, I told the others I was done with my side of the edit, stepped away for a bit, and then threw myself into some writing exercises to feed the itch. The others finished their edits and read-throughs not long after.
From here, the plan is simple. The three of us are sending it to some beta readers (ie: close friends to double check things) on Tuesday. After that Iâd like to send it out for a sensitivity read, do tweaks according to both sets of feedback, thenâŚyeah. Weâre good.
The plan at this point is self-publishing so @fioriisketches and @lazyninjartist have the freedom to design the inside and outside of the book. I'm hype to see what we can do with the layout.
What Else Has Been Going On
So, it's been 3 months, and there's been a bit going on between now and September. First and foremost, I started drafting pieces of book 2 (yes, we want to do another book) and doing character studies in November. I'm probably going to pick up a 4thewords subscription next year after how much fun I had during NaNo 2023.
December I took a break from writing a bit to compensate for how much I was doing in November. The plan is to ease back into it Janurary/February - then again, my plans have failed before.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to what 2024 brings - I'll hopefully see you all there. For now, I'm going to leave you with one of my favourite parts of The Case of the Crawling Shadow. @lazyninjartist handled the opening section during draft 1, then @fioriisketches and I came in to embelish and adjust dialogue. It's one of the chapters that's changed the least since we started, I think.
So, it's been a hot minute since I talked about Cryptologists. During the Christmas period, the three of us had a blanket agreement to take a break, and take a break we did. I buggered off to the US for a spell, then came home jetlagged and ready to get back to editing.
At the moment, we're in the third draft. It is the most excruciating part of the editing process thus far.
At this point in writing The Case of the Crawling Shadow, there's really only two big things we're fixing narrative wise. That <i>should</i> be a good thing. Sure, it'll be a lot of work, if the three of us just fix <i>that</i> we're good to go, right??
Nope.
You see, the problem I've been reading The Cast of the Crawling Shadow for so long, that I keep catching myself skimming. Given how this is meant to be our last draft, if I don't catch any dodgy spelling or weird sentences before this draft is done, it's probably going to end up in the book. Sure, we have beta readers, but it seems unfair to give them a book that isn't ready to be published.
One way I've tried to get around it is using Hemingway, doing the structural edit one chapter at a time. For people who've never used it, it's designed more for short form writing and not-so-much editing a novel. That said, the change in document layout has been great for my tired eyes and its focus on clarity forces me to reassess our chunkier sentences.
Unfortunately, Makoto, Alex, Cissy and Tim all use a lot of adverbs in their dialogue.
To be fair, that's just how people talk - in fact, it's how I talk. That said, I can't help but cringe every time I see the word "just" shoved into a sentence. While I'm not aiming to remove them all or even get to the limit per chapter, it's significant enough that every time someone opens their mouth I wind up going "can they word this differently and still sound natural". If the answer is no, it stays.
One of the big jobs I've had the last few weeks is changing a major plot element in the book. Originally, we wanted to have Scott appear after his murder and confuse Makoto about his time of death since for the first half of the book he's working under the assumption ghosts aren't real in this setting. Due to a change in focus, we ended up axing this idea so the last 3 weeks I've been going in and removing references to ghost Scott.
I'm doing this at the same time as the structural edit.
My general rule right now is doing 1-3 chapters a week since right now that's all my schedule is allowing for. With any luck, all 3 of us will finish our read throughs and edits soon.
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The Voynich Manuscript: will we ever be able to read this book?
A 15th-century manuscript is written in a language that has baffled every expert. Is it just a brilliant hoax, or will someone eventually decipher its meaning
Somewhere deep inside the bowels of Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library â the Ivy League institution's own cemetery of lost books â lies a tome that experts have studied for centuries, but which has yet to be understood by a single soul.
The book has no known author or official title; Yale librarians simply refer to it as manuscript MS 408. But thanks to its peculiar language, symbols and diagrams â often strangely familiar, but insistently elusive in meaning â it has intrigued and frustrated anthropologists, linguists and mathematicians for centuries: even the elite cryptologists at the US National Security Agency drew a blank, after they spent years trying to decode it in the 1950s. And the time that some researchers have dedicated to the problem seems all the more remarkable given the possibility that, for all the complexity and consistency of the script it contains, it could simply be an elaborate hoax. Read more.
