This was kind of a tough chapter for me to complete. And not just because my last post was ten days ago. I had never really been convinced that this chapter, titled “Samuel Hunter’s Complaint”, was necessary. For most of it, I was pushing it to the grave, not letting myself remember why I put it in there in the first place. Once I started picking it apart and putting it back together and answering the questions that my process poses for each chapter, I was able to save it and even like it. But liking it is never the issue: whether it fits in with the story you’re trying to tell and the message that story should tell to the reader? That’s the ONLY issue that matters. That’s the thing that has kept this project alive for me for almost four years; it maintains its relevance.
Tale of the Tape: This really didn’t take too much elbow grease. My Flesch scores only varied by a couple of tenths from start to finish, while the word count only increased by one. It took about three hours all told to get it done. I only made two changes in the text-to-speech step, which is usually a lot more detailed than that. Nice to say what you want to say and how you want to say it the first time. The worst part was pulling “smart quotes” out of the document.
A Random 250 (or so) Words:
Up Next: I’m going to sort through my myriad stacks of papers and notebooks and piles of story notes and see if I can round up three short projects to stuff into the pipeline in between the novel work. I want to keep my work out there and new stuff is the best way to do that. I’ve got one in mind already; two more shouldn’t be that difficult, right? Right? After those are started, I’ll pen another update with some vague details, then it’s back to MGC, writing the rough for Chapter 17 and editing Chapter 11.
Aside from, of course, the little thing happening on August 2nd. The little big thing. Details tomorrow.
Thanks for reading!
John Christian Hager's Blog 