I’m in the process of re-jigging my manuscript. 
It came back from the editorial consultancy a week ago with the comment that they felt I should delay one of the two crisis points in the novel until the almost bitter end. This crisis happens at the about the 77,000 word mark of a 99,000 word novel.
This week I attended some sessions of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival.
“In its 25th year, Melbourne Writers Festival is a nationally and internationally-acclaimed festival featuring over 350 writers from around the world and more than 300 events.
Well, I suspect it might be this weekend, beginning with today.
I am at the shack (for those outside Tasmania [Australia] read cottage, beach house etc). I have the laptop with me, I have my revision reports, research notes, dictionary and thesaurus. I arrived at midday. It’s been a mild day . . . unusually. It should be freezing as it’s past June 1, but its forecast to be 17 (64?). The sky is powder blue and there is no wind . . . none. It’s heaven.
When my first book was released in December of 2008, I had a vague idea that as a complete unknown I would be responsible for a large proportion of my own widening profile. I had no idea that in 12 months it would have covered such a lengthy ride over a vast techno-landscape.
This week, Feb 10, on Writer Unboxed, Anne Aguirre discussed the hero vs. the anti-hero. And it fitted in with my thoughts when I saw how many people had visited my blog after mentioning Richard Armitage and including a shot of him as Guy of Gisborne. Patently the anti-hero is alive and well.
I’ve almost finished darkening my male protagonist in Paperweights (working title) at the request of the London editor. I want the new shade of dark to have quite a dimensional effect on the manuscript and wondered how to best approach the next stage before I send it back. So I referred back through Writer Unboxed (http://writerunboxed.com) to see what my fave Writing Master may think. In 2007, when being interviewed by Therese Walsh, Donald Maass said the following:
A few months ago, Writer Unboxed had a discussion on the advisability or not of creating names and languages in fantasy. There’s no doubt that Tolkein was the master. But I have put more fantasies by other authors back on the shop-shelves than I have bought, simply because many of the names and languages read like a Scrabble box of letters. My feeling for what it is worth is that the English language, ancient and modern, has a mammoth reservoir of words into which one can delve. In addition, if a fantasy author chooses to model parts of their world on a specific culture, I feel it’s more than okay to pilfer the odd foreign word and use it for one’s own needs. As a reader though, I need to be able to roll words around like a lozenge and taste them. It’s an idiosyncracy and one I use in my own writing.
