Tuesday 20 September 2005

It's Two Thirty in the morning. I have just finished Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth.

When I say "finished" I mean that I have just typed those two magic words, "The End". There is plenty for me still to do. Firstly I need to check for consistency throughout. My hero and my heroine definitely reach the end of the book with the same names as they began it, but I have probably managed to swap over the names of the fat loquacious villain and the thin silent villain halfway through, and who knows whether the same butler has stayed in the same household from start to finish? Then I need to ensure that the hero's personality flaws, so critical to the climax of the story, are properly flagged up early on, and that the heroine's character development actually happens on the page and not just in my mind. I also need to do what I can to improve the bits that read like a pile of poo.

All that to be done in half-a-dozen evenings and a weekend, so that I can get the typescript submitted to the RNA's New Writers' Scheme.

But it still feels good to have gotten this far.

6 comments:

Alex Bordessa said...

I'm pretty sure that none of the Behemoth smells like poo :-) Good luck with the NWS!

Nell Dixon said...

Congratulations on writing the end! Doesn't it feel great, even if there's still work to do?

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Stephen. Fabulous feeling. I'm perfectly sure that none of Behemoth spells like poo. I just hope for your sake that your heroine doesn't deserve a slap, or all us Heyer fans might be tempted to administer it!

Douglas Hoffman said...

Congratulations, and best of luck with the editing, Stephen. It's a pain, but you knew that already.

Anonymous said...

A reader writes: you may wish to start by disposing of words like "gotten", although I'm sure that it does not appear in the manuscript. Well done.

Gabriele Campbell said...

Conga Rats on The End. :)

It'll be some time yet until I can do the same because of my slow Editing While I Go writing.