Back to Edit Inputtin

I've been back to editing the digital file based on my hand editing of the last printed copy. Everything is gong well enough. The biggest problem is trying to understand what I was trying to accomplish months ago when I made the edits.

I drew lines and arrows, crossed out words, put numbers on the pages that referred to passages on the back of the page, and at times wrote nearly illegible words. Sometimes I will delete the words that I had crossed out only to see that I had later written "ok", meaning "don't delete". Opps. UNDO. When the moving of passages and number of arrows is more than two I struggle to make sense of anything. I have ended a night of editing when when I reach a page with a large amount of revisions on it. The sight of it just makes my head hurt.

I've had to learn to not second guess myself. Sometimes when initially upon reading an edit it won't make sense. So I break my smooth editing rhythm and try to figure out what I was thinking. That's typically when I realize I changed around the end of the sentence (or paragraph) to line up with the earlier edits. Every occasion that I have stopped has resulted in a later revelation that I had made the right decision to begin with.

The worst rhythm break is my handwriting. Sometimes I'm short on space and had to cram in the letters. Sometimes it seems that I was just lazy. Every time I run across such a mess I say to myself that I'll be more careful next time. I'm sure that I won't.

Some Catchup

I never like doing the "catch up" sort of posts. I don't quite capture the emotions of the moment, but I feel I should note the past few months efforts in editing.

August through late October saw little activity on the editing front. Late October I was laid off from my paying job. After a few weeks of panic and coupon clipping I had little else to do but work on the GIANT. Having been off for so long I had to thumb through the draft to remember all the details of the plot. Once accomplished I dove back into it. Having long stretches of time I was able to make quite a bit of progress.

I did rework the plot slightly. I shifted some of the focus between the characters and further defined their roles. I also reworked the later chapters and the ending. It makes a little more sense now - along with having an added sense of mysticism (I hope). The more edits I make, the more I tweak the story and flesh out the plot, the characters, and their back story.

And having changed around the end of this so much I needed to go back and revise some earlier details. So I thumbed through the pages, adding in bits here and there. I find that when I'm making the changes to the digital file I don't read the story, anything I want to add I need to do to the physical print. Though I'm planning at least one more digital edit.

I never thought that everything would require so much editing, but the story has benefited from each revision. At some point, though, I'll have to stop making changes and call the thing finished.

Currently I'm making the digital changes based on the aforementioned physical edits. I will do my best to keep current the updates on my progress here.

thegiantbook.com

For more than a year, thegiantbook.com has been a blog site. As of Janruary 25th, 2009 it is a multi page site. Previously the blog/documentary looked very much like a blog that you might see anywhere.

I have found new software that allows me to customize the look of the blog to make it look less like I'm talking about my favorite movie stars or other nonsense. Hopefully this will lend a little more credibility to things and make it look a little more serious.

The website also allows people to read snippits from the book and maybe even add a little mystery to the book.

I want to add more to the site, namely artwork. I have some conceptual sketches that need some more work before they go up. I'd like to add some initial drafts of the work - a few select passages.

Once the book is published, I want to add a section for people that own the book, using a password taken from the book so they can access select information. Cool stuff, not sure what that would be yet.