In which the penultimate draft is done

[rolanni]

Last night I finished the penultimate draft of Carousel Seas, the last book in the Archers Beach trilogy.  Now the manuscript (and the author) get a couple days to breathe before I dive in among the commas for a last pass.

Also?  I get to clean off my desk.  The picture below is your reminder that creativity is messy.

The desk at the end of the draft

* * *

Progress on Carousel Seas

100,358/100,000 words OR 100.36% complete

Here ends the penultimate draft

Comments

[estara.livejournal.com]

Banzai! Happy book finishing day ^^

[cgbookcat1.livejournal.com]

Hooray!

What type of keyboard is that? It looks extremely comfortable.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

The keyboard is a Kinesis Advantage. It is, I think, my third Kinesis keyboard, going back. . .23? years. I have tendinitis in my wrists -- one of the hazards of the job -- and dangling my fingers down into the little pockets helps keep the strain off.

I love this keyboard, but -- a word of warning. If you are what in my day was called a "touch typist" (which means you type with all ten fingers from the home-row position and don't need to look at the keys when you type), the learning curve is a beast. The only reason I didn't throw myself off a tall building during the first three weeks with the first Kinesis was the lack of tall buildings in my part of Maine...

[drammar.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!!

Given that perception is often far removed from reality, it seems as though this book was not a shy about getting written as, say, Ghost Ship. It seems to me that for that leg of Theo's story the backbrain did not feed the forebrain as quickly as with this one. Is that even close to accurate?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely correct; Ghost Ship was very shy and difficult. Part of that is because Ghost Ship has more moving parts than all three of the Carousel books stacked end-to-end.

In general, the Liaden books tend to be complicated to write, because of the multiple storylines and characters. But even then, some Liaden books more are more difficult than others -- In recent memory, Mouse and Dragon practically wrote itself and Necessity's Child was pleasantly easy to write. Ghost Ship and Trade Secret were among the most difficult.

[jessie-c.livejournal.com]

Truly this is a cause for much rejoicing!

draft

[nocal-kathyf.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! I am currently taking an on-line Masters of Ed course, and my desk looks about the same. Very comforting, actually. Not sure how people can create in an absolutely ordered environment. Great news about the completion of the draft for Carousel Seas. :)

[thewol.livejournal.com]

It fascinates me to see other people's desks, the way they organize things, and the little play-pretties they have scattered about. I notice you have a collection of objects on your monitor base. (Me too. I have a collection of quartz points apportioned to both monitor bases) Love the Saturn wallpaper. Wow -- you have a lot of icons on your desktop.