What does: 1 manuscript; 15 revision cycles; 17 chapters; 1350 annotations made during copy editing; and 63631 words add up to? Good question. The beginning of the end!
What does: 1 manuscript; 15 revision cycles; 17 chapters; 1350 annotations made during copy editing; and 63631 words add up to? Good question. The beginning of the end!
Yesterday’s fortune said that ‘I would become an accomplished writer.‘ I am not really sure how to take that!
Tomorrow, 11 Mar 1818 the novel Frankenstein will be 200 years old! An interesting milestone to say the least.
This National Post article goes into detail on how the story has been interpreted over the years. Some argue on its genre, others claim it to be a feminist work and some claim its autobiographical.
What I learned from this article? Once you release a work into the wild, readers will form their own impression. That means the end effect your work has on the hearts and minds of readers is entirely out of your control.
What will people think of your work in two centuries? Who knows, but it’s important to note that even the author’s views changed over time!
There few opportunities to go out and explore during this last trip. Sometimes the opportunity simply eluded me or other priorities were given precedence. To put it mildly, this had been a long and grueling trip and work hours regularly extend beyond sixteen hours. Hence given an opportunity to sleep, I embraced it wholeheartedly.
I did visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I had been there before but remembered little of it, so this time I made sure to bring my camera. I often prescribe to the shotgun approach to photography, as in take a lot of pictures and sort them out later. This has worked well for me in the past, since a random shot of a painting inspired the cover for The Portrait.
The shot above was one of the gems found in my archive of pictures from that day. In the corner surrounded by two paintings there was a patron enjoying the exhibits just as I was. However, her clothes and pose seemed to fit in perfectly with her surroundings.
In a way she seemed to be the embodiment of art. True? False? Who cares! I only hope this shot can inspire others as did for me.
Authors are as varied as the stories they tell. Some write by hand, channeling the spirit of monks and scribes. Others prefer the feel of a typewriter, which is often portrayed in movies and novels.
Technology has allowed writers to venture into the digital realm. While authors like George R.R. Martin remain stubbornly entrenched to the technology they adopt; others look towards the horizon for technologies to aid their journey.
Many of us own phones that have more processing power than what was available to NASA during the Apollo program. However, this technology has not been widely adopted for content creation.
(more…)It’s not everyday that one gets to blur the lines between fiction and reality. Using a high quality version of my cover, I had a 20 x 30 inch canvas print of the Lady made.
So what is a canvas without a frame? I had a local shop build me a custom frame using two separate borders. I have to admit that rather like the final product. Although I will say that I am likely biased!
A visual comparison between revisions for the Man and the Sea, a chapter for the Grand. This particular video demonstrates how the Spiral Development method can apply to the review process of a novel; namely how chapters are refined over time.
This is a follow to my Comparing the Grand’s Revisions post, which goes into why and how this particular chapter was selected for comparison. This video also demonstrates how the amount of changes gradually recede to leave behind a coherent manuscript and that is something any author wants to see!
This video is a composite comparison of 12 chapters in all. While there are 14 versions of the chapters, some had no changes to bring forward so there was nothing gained by showing them. For those curious, the above image below denotes the total changes between Revision 2 and Revision 14.
When I wrote the Grand, I made sure to collect statistics on changes and kept a copy of revisions. This enabled me to measure my progress and gauge how things were moving along. I detailed this process before under the post titled Spiral Development for the Literary World.
There was one element I never explored at the time and that was comparing the earliest revision available against the newest. In the back of my mind, I half-expected it show me a document filled with corrections and would find very little original text remaining. What I found was pretty much exactly as I imagined.
To find the ideal candidate, I looked through the amount of changes made per revision and originally found that the Van Helsing Paradox had the highest number. Not a revelation per sey, considering it is also my largest chapter.
Instead, I compared total revisions made against the amount of words and discovered that the Man and the Sea had highest percentage of corrections over it’s lifetime. Since this chapter is also one of the shortest, it also allowed me to show visually how the bulk of the chapter was altered.
For those curious here is a list of the number of changes based on revision:
Overall I found it humbling and fascinating. It allowed me to see how dramatic 12 revisions could be when compared directly!
I had the opportunity to land on les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec, Canada. The Magdalen Islands are small chain of islands located north of Prince Edward Island, Canada in the Saint Lawrence Gulf. While my stay was relatively short, I did visit a few museums, smoke house and a cheese maker.
The island is sparsely populated, offers beautiful landscapes, beaches, sea-side views and wind. I posted the above pictures in the hopes that it would inspire someone!