Will the Real Manuscript Please Stand Up

I am only a few chapters from the end of this the final round of edits — well, the final round before I send it to my publisher — and I discovered something. I’m a scatterbrained, sponge-headed, ninny.

I have somehow got random versions all mixed about, despite carefully trying not to. The chapters I’m working with are not necessarily the ones I should be, the manuscript I was going off, may not be the latest version and I have one version which may be the latest (pre this edit round) but I can’t find the proof of it.

Last time I was going through this – and had been sending chapters to my beta-reader I came to a point where I stopped. Life happened, but also I had a thought, a creative blurp that I didn’t know if I could actually follow. There would be good things to it, but it may interfere with the flow of the novel. I paused, waiting for more chapters to return and to deal with whatever it was life was using to beat me down.

Time passed

When I returned to this novel, to finish a final edit /read through before passing on to my editor at Xchyler, I had assumed I could follow this side track. I got the inspiration from my Muse and wrote a half chapter and then a new ending to tack on to the one already there. Based on these additions I wove in a tertiary plot line, because it worked and would enrich the tale just that little bit.

Now I know I have pasted the place where this new chapter would come in. I realized that I had been adding chapters to a manuscript that just stopped – assuming this was the right one because it stopped when I stopped adding the edited version to it. However, it should have stopped at this point of possible revelation…which it didn’t.

I have already tried combing through the knots in all the different versions of chapters, and manuscripts trying to find that place – that moment captured in words. I have yet to find to find it. Thus I have to widen my search and get a finer toothed comb as well.

If I can’t find the right place, I will have to cruise through and see if I can find a place it should go – or more importantly can go. I have to see if I can actually fuse this new chapter into the manuscript. I want it there, I think it helps – but if there isn’t a true place waiting for it’s inclusion… forcing it may just result in further work all along the writing that will simply be cut out again once my editor reads it.

I finished up with the last chapter edits from my beta-reader. I have four or fine chapters left to edit. I will leave it as it is for now. I am getting my Scadian on this week, and going to a five day camping event leaving Wednesday morning. Tuesday will be final run around and packing up – and so the issue of guessing which is the right manuscript will wait. I will attack the puzzle fresh when I return next week and try not to stress about it until then.

Filed under: Book Release, Publishing, Writing Tagged: beta reader, Bindings & Spines, current work in progress, editor, edits, frustration, Jonathan Alvey, muse, novel, paranormal, paranormal private investigator, plot, publish, scene, Urban Fantasy, White Dragon Black Series, Xchyler Publishing