Once more, hello!
So, last month’s main news was integrating my copy-edits from Jon Oliver (https://www.jonolivereditor.co.uk/), which you can see more about in the last peek over my shoulder. I’m very happy with the results and feel a lot more confident about my manuscript as a result, and, thank you all – it’s the Patreon support that made it possible for me to hire him on.
I think – touch wood – that the fatigue issues I was having after my mysterious fever have lifted, and I’m getting a lot more time at the keyboard. The heat, though, does slow me down – the UK is not known for large amounts of Air Conditioning.
What’s interesting is that period of my life where I was very much not slowed down – while I was writing Dog Country. Admittedly, most of it happened in late winter/early spring, but I don’t think the temperature was the only factor. Alongside my old drafts of Dog Country, I found my working notes, time plans, and all sorts of insights into how I actually wrote the book.
The bulk of the work was in around six weeks of outlining in late 2013, actually writing the manuscript in a burnout inducing thirty-two day sprint in early 2014, then various stretches of edits adding up to maybe another four to eight weeks of work. The burnout part? I’m not looking forward to repeating that, but compared to a lot of other work I’ve done, Dog Country went fast.
So, I’ve been spending some time trying to work out how and why I worked so fast with Dog Country. My notes from that are likely be the next ‘peek over the shoulder’, and hopefully this month I can start trying to use my old good habits, even though I’ve forgotten about them for years, to help with the Space Opera.
In the meanwhile I hope you’re all well, that you maintain vigilance around masks, handwashing, and general social distancing cautions, and that good things happen for you this August. And, as ever, thank you so much for your support.
