Revising Update

Just so I talk about something other than Wolfe for a minute or two...

As I mentioned last week, I'm trying to revise my NaNoWriMo 2008 project as the 2009 project melted in my hands, not in my mouth (and not just because of lousy metaphors like that one). While I've been thinking about various parts of the novel over the last year or so, I have lost track of a handful of details--been thinking about the forest far more than the trees. So this last week I scoped out some of the trees.

I've been skimming the draft taking notes on the characters and locations I used--reacquainting myself with who's who, and where's where. Been a fairly interesting exercise, I have to admit.

Especially looking at the goofs. For example,

• My protagonist has 2 different last names
• I have far too many characters whose first names start with "T". Would have to be confusing to my theoretical readers, pretty darn confusing to me.
• I have a supporting character conveniently away for a couple of weeks so I don't have to deal with him too much, and then I have him minding the home-front two pages (and a day and a half) later. Not sure which one of those I'll end up using, but it's fairly embarrassing.

Over all, I liked the characters better than I thought, remembered some of them better than I'd have expected, and, not that I was paying attention to the plot on this run through, what I glanced at I felt much better about than I figured I would've (particularly following the aforementioned disintegration).

This is gonna be fun!