Update: Lots of revision

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Update: Lots of revision

Okay, so I worked really hard to get SC#2 out to proofreaders on Friday, in order to clear the decks for serious revision of SC#3 over the weekend.

So, for Silver Circle #3, I have now:

–lightly tweaked chapter one.

–doubled the length of chapter six, taking the total wordcount up to 154,000 words.

–revised chapter eight and made a note about later changes that depend on this newly revised version.

–wholly rewritten chapter two, which I didn’t expect at all. This was interesting because the broadest outline of events in that chapter is unchanged, yet everything else changed radically around that outline. This also brought the wordcount back down to 148,000 words, giving me more space for other things later, which is great.

–deleted most of chapter three and moved a big chunk of chapter eleven up to replace it.

And that’s where I am right now.

What’s next?

–smooth out chapter three, because all I’ve done is move the chunk of chapter eleven. I haven’t actually integrated it yet.

–read and hopefully barely tweak chapters four, five, the revised six, seven, the revised eight, nine, and ten.

–consider what’s left of chapter eleven and probably move something from chapter fourteen up to that spot. Or maybe delete the remnants of chapter eleven.

–heavily revise chapter twelve because of the big change back in chapter eight.

— read and hopefully barely tweak chapter thirteen.

–heavily revise chapters fourteen and fifteen.

–tweak chapter sixteen

–AND SO ON, That’s enough of a chapter-by-chapter list.

–write a short chapter, probably chapter twenty-three, because I realized I need to tie off a plotline that otherwise is left hanging.

–write at least one scene, maybe two, that will get inserted in other chapters.

–finish the epilogue, FINALLY.

–Do a little trivial polishing and formatting.

Let us pause to consider the date:

It’s October 28th! Where did October even GO? The chance I’ll get ALL THIS finished by the end of the month is zero. I’m now aiming for Monday, which would be November 4th. MAYBE I can get through all this by then. Especially if I take off work Friday, which I probably will.

The weather is nice. I’ve been taking the dogs out for short bursts of ecstatic, mad running. That is, the older dogs meander around while keeping an eye on me in case cookies might be forthcoming. Joy and Haydee are the ones who run madly, mostly together, but sometimes splitting up. I prefer them to stay together because Haydee is visible. Joy vanishes in autumn leaves and, since she moves REALLY fast and NONSTOP, is hard to keep track of.

Joy is also now a teenager. Haydee skipped that stage, but Joy has not. We’ve therefore been working on a fast, first-time recall, thus: I wait till the first burst of energy has died down, then wait for Joy to be some distance away but visible, then I call JOY, COME!!! If she whips around and races to me, she gets many small, delicious treats in a row. If she doesn’t, she gets one warning (JOY, HEY! COME!!). If she comes at that point — fast, straight to me — she gets a couple nice little treats. If she doesn’t respond to the warning, I go get her, put her on leash, and practice a compelled recall for a minute or two. Then we try again. Yes, this is a pain, but her recall is MUCH better than it was even a couple weeks ago. The thought of her getting loose in the woods still terrifies me, but I hope that I could at least get her to turn around if I saw her bolt through a hole in the fence.

Here we are, at the nice new gate, with straight, solid fence posts on both sides and no leaning or gap. The old fence posts, just as big as these, had rotted through belowground, apparently, and that’s why the old gate had become unsafe. Once through the gate, they can go off-lead. Haydee and especially Joy are like racehorses when released: they take off like rockets. The other dogs take off like much slower, calmer rockets.