Editing

I didn't have much new stuff written, except that my first and second round editing processes usually add words instead of removed them. SMWM says that's wrong, but I already know that is how I work. Those two rounds are actually rewrite edits; anything I don't like, I usually rewrite the entire paragraph or section to smooth it out.

For the writing group, I originally edited A Cup of Soup and Raging Alone. However, once I got through Alone, I was 1.5k words over the submission limit. I dropped Soup and added two of the essays instead. That brought me up to exactly the limit.

Table of Contents

I think I have the table of contents and the order of the entire piece finally figured out. It starts with the important thing about the world (what is resonance, units of measurement, pronunciation). There are stories scattered pretty evenly with essays and poems breaking up the longer pieces.

1. Notes from the Editor: Why I'm doing this and the philosophy behind it
2. Introduction to Resonance: Essay
3. Ministry of Standards: Essay on measurements
4. Farimon's Gift: Essay
5. Farimon's Revelation: Story about desperate invention
6. Speaking Miwāfu: Lesson on Miwafu names
7. Raging Alone: Coming of Age story set in the desert
8. Painful Love: Poem
9. The Cros Gambit: Story about a violent sports game
10. Grand Cros Clashball: Essay on aftermath of the Gambit
11. Bloodball: Essay on the aftermath of the Grand Cros announcement
12. Steam Engines: Poem
13. Samus and the Savage Slasher: Over-the-top story of pulp adventure
14. Alone: Poem
15. Under the Streets: Forensics mystery story
16. Growing Up: Poem
17. A Cup of Soup: Story about a mother who abandoned her magic and her daughter who just got it
18. Chicken Soup Recipe
19. I Love Her, I Hate Her: Poem
20. Second-Hand Dresses: Romance story about an almost-spinster meeting the man who ruined her life
21. Simple Goren: Fable
22. Classifieds: Short collection of classifieds
23. Colophon: Final notes, licenses, etc.

The only two pieces that don't have at least a first draft are the classifieds and the colophon. Worst-case scenario, I'll drop the classifieds section.

Lead-ins

Because of the inspiration for this piece, I wasn't originally planning on having very obvious titles. I relented on that, but they are going to be set in the same font and size as the rest of the world. To emphasize the introduction, however, I was going to have a lead-in.

A BARBARIAN CHILD

ABANDONED IN THE CRUEL DESERT!

WILL HE SURVIVE!?

HOW WILL HE DIE!?

FIND OUT IN

BANTOR NIFSIN'S

TERRIFYING TALE

OF

MAGIC,

DEATH,

AND

CRUELTY!

This is what I was thinking for the lead-in for Raging Alone. Yeah, everything is overly dramatic, but I think I'm okay with that.

Style

There are going to also be a lot of horizontal rules in this. Section breaks in the sample newspapers were basically short lines while the separation between pieces are a single line that goes across the entire column. I'm going to stick with that, even in the ebook, because I think it adds to the ascetic.

I'm also planning on the convention of serif fonts for in-world and sans-serif for out of world pieces (credits, my introduction). I'm not going to say that, but I think it should be obvious.

Of course, if it doesn't, then I won't.

Capitals

Capitals are used pretty heavily in this piece, mainly because of the inspirational material. In the text, I've marked them as bold but the end result will have them in either small caps or all capitals, I haven't decided.

Part of this comes from Gail Carriger's description of a certain vampire ("You can hear the italics.") but also just to keep building on that overly dramatic emphasis that just seems to show up in newspapers.

There is definitely a “style” to writing this. The different pieces have different authors, and I think I've found a somewhat workable way of showing their focuses in the story. For example, in A Cup of Soup, one of the reasons for the piece is to sell products (not unlike soap operas). So, the bold comes in for product names. For Samus, the bold are for the dramatic strikes and well-telegraphed twists.

Lexember

Through this, I've been participating in Lexember. Mostly, I'm posting on Twitter #Lexember hashtag.

I've also thrown my conlang, Miwāfu, up on GitHub. I've done this for a couple of reasons. One, I like showing my work. And two, I'm not going to put most of it in my novels. While it would be awesome to translate hunks of the book, it would be more work to explain what the words mean instead of doing notational translations (put it in italic English).

It is a one word a day thing, so every day I'm creating a word. Most of them have to do with either Sand and Blood, Sand and Ash, or the Journals of Fedran.

Plans for this week

This is a little thing week. I want to get a lot of little things done and at least started in the pipeline:

• Create a cover or two to get a feel for them.
• Edit at least one more story.
• Create at least two of the lead-ins.
• Get the build system to generate the entire piece.
• Try to get at least a PDF version.