Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Lost Chapter

In going through my latest chapter, my editor ran across a character where she was like, whoa, where'd he come from?

The answer is he was first introduced in chapter 1. Except the first chapter was taken out. In one of my former editor/publisher's last acts before she officially and finally fell off the face of the earth, she told me I should take out the first chapter and weave in the "details" throughout the rest of the book, that chapter 1 wasn't worth keeping.

I had a somewhat violent reaction to this since I thought chapter 1 actually had quite a bit of good stuff, combining action with introducing some fairly major characters, like the one in question. But whatev, I can certainly take criticism/instruction from an editor, and I took out the chapter.

Fast forward to the present, and my shiny new editor has the revised manuscript without chapter 1. I explained the situation to her, and guess what? Yup, it's going back in. This marks the last of the major edits instituted by my former editor/publisher that my current editor and I are undoing. Feels good, too, since I disagreed with each one of them.

Unfortunately, things have slowed down a bit on the editing front. It seems my editor has taken up some new responsibilities with the publishing house, and I haven't gotten a chapter back from her in about a week. And counting the re-constituted chapter 1, there's only 3 left! Once that's done, I get to go back and "spice" it up a bit.

So hopefully I'll get another chapter soon. But it's okay. I've been patient this long, a little longer ain't gonna kill me. :)

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