After processing the suggestions over the weekend, I implemented the editorial feedback to the first three chapters. This is proving a very good learning experience.

For starters, until Friday night, I was unstudied in the art of proofreading shorthand, the notations editors make to indicate changes. Usually when vetting my stuff, I insert the fix immediately above the affected word, sentence or passage. Proofreaders, though, flag an issue very discretely in place with a symbol, then link that symbol to details in the margins. In this way, it’s possible to keep the actual text–and the fix–in perspective, without overweighting either. My crude, brute force method swallows the whole page in green circles, arrows and scrawl.

Now the suggestion of leaving 1 inch of white space all the way around the page suddenly makes sense for reasons beside aesthetics. They use that margin. Imagine that. And there’s another lesson, too.

For all the markups, for all the suggestions, in the end, the manuscript is there. It can be tweaked in subtle ways, and would benefit from a completely virgin set of eyes, with no emotional investment, which I have requested. More on that when I hear back.

In the meantime, I’ll miss my chicken scratches.

Completely unrelated but so far this year site traffic is up substantially over last at this time, even after trouncing comment spambots by disabling pingbacks. Of the four years of this site’s operation, I’ve never spent less time trying to promote the place. Curious.

I will post more in the next day or so. Just a very quick note for now…

First day back to writing after roughly two weeks off, which followed two–endless, oh so endless–weeks of ten hour plus days at work. The technical needs of a school are highly cyclical, and swing from the doldrums of summer, where crickets keep me upright, to the first months of a new term, where by the time I fix the seven problems waiting for my arrival on campus, three more emergencies beckon, one possibly tragic.

In the past few weeks, I discovered I don’t mind submitting my work, a task never pursued seriously or with any specific method until now. Very consciously I elected to get the product as right as I could manage, before investing any energy into selling it. Now that the “package” is together, talking it up is less difficult than I expected. And I don’t mind the waiting part, knowing full well I’ll never hear back on some queries, and other responses might take months–or years–more. There’s a reason for a query burst, a break to allow responses to filter back, and then a reload.

Far, far more difficult was not writing at all, a movement that rests on my actions alone. The longer I avoid it, the bigger pain I become. When I start taking nonsense personally, and the beer in the house seems to disappear, that’s a good indicator a “pause” stretched into the danger zone.

A place I prefer not to visit.

Tomorrow I receive suggestions from a woman who used to work for a top shelf literary agent.

Here’s a snippet regarding her impressions:

“…I think you have the right attitude about all of this. The bottom line is that you need your readers to enjoy and participate in your work. So I’m going to go back over my markups, to hopefully make them as clear as possible, before I give them to ( –redacted by Sam– ) to give to you. Please don’t hesitate to write me back with questions after you’ve looked things over…”

Now interestingly, her tastes are serious literary fiction. Of which The Last Track is not. Needless to say, I’m very, very grateful she’s making time to read and comment on a piece–even in part–that burrows wide of her personal preferences.

See, right there, that’s one of them there signs. Like M. Night style.

Must keep listening to the voices.