My Dear Friend Bunbury

Well, it’s been awhile since I posted, and I thought I should share a little of what’s been happening in my web absence and what will be happening to further absent me from the web this month.

About a week ago we returned from visiting our dear, ill friend Bunbury out in the country. (If you are about to offer your condolences to Bunbury, please read or watch The Importance of Being Earnest first, or jump here for a quick introduction.)

Upon our return, I felt pressed to get back to blogging and the continuation of 101 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My First Book, but decided it was more important to tackle, wrestle to the ground and eviscerate my manuscript of Dream of a City of Ruin. It had come back from editing just before we left with six pages of notes and an entire pad of stickies wedged between the pages, and for a few days I stared balefully at it from the other room, hoping it would get up and fix itself.

Alas, nothing happened, so eventually I started treading my way through, re-reading it and making note of its numerous issues. The bad news: there are a lot of issues. The good news: None of them are insurmountable. The even better news: My summary method is working quite well, because I found buried in my files a fairly accurate summary of this draft, and I was able to read through the summary and re-work it, adding notes for scenes to be deleted, added, or altered. The result of about a week spent re-reading the draft, and two days spent editing the summary, is a cohesive revision plan. I’ve revised about a quarter of the manuscript in the last two days, which is fairly fast work for me. The rest may take longer, as some portions will need to be re-written altogether, but the outlook is good.

Sadly, poor Bunbury has taken a turn for the worse, and I may be sometime with him this month. He always gets like this in August, especially when the summer is particularly hot and sunny. I did tell him that I have a manuscript to revise, but he gently reminded me that I will have all of the rainy season to sit indoors at my desk. 

So it is that after a couple more days of work, the manuscript will be sitting once again. Fortunately, my mind need not sit still while I am visiting Bunbury. Being in the country always helps me to reset and return refreshed and ready to sit down at my desk again. All of the issues that seem impossible miraculously come unstuck when I come back to writing after getting distance from it.

As for blogging, that will probably suffer another week or so after I get back, because once again the focus will be getting DCR ready for beta reading (let me know if you’d like to volunteer; I have a few of you in mind already. Having read DVBC is definitely a requirement).

Daily blogging and 101 TIWIK will start again, probably in September. Stay tuned and get out there and visit Bunbury yourself, before the summer is gone!