Facebook flog - Mar 19 2013

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Mar 19 2013, 4:20
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's Facebook. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

Copyedits for Affliction have begun in earnest. They're due back March 22, which is this Friday. *Ah!* This is a chance not only for grammar & spelling, but also to change a new character's name if they had a placeholder name until I could think of a better one. Our wonderful continuity editor, Missy, who has only come on board since Kiss the Dead will help me make sure people don't keep growing & shrinking a few inches from book to book, and eye color. *rolls eyes* Why do I keep chaning some character's eye color? Also time line issues. *sigh*

Comments

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

Our wonderful continuity editor who changed Vivian to Vanessa? Thank God she's here.

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

Given the info we've had about the schedule, I don't blame the continuity editor. She's not being given adequate time to do her job.

[fangedsekhmet.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think she has people to do all the work for her. Waiting for the day she hires a ghost-writer.

Continuity for me is frantically searching keywords in Word.

And place holders for names? I tend to think up the names first... or am I weird?

[moonbeamdancer.livejournal.com]

I can understand using a place holder if an idea is rolling along and it just doesn't want to wait for you to think of something more appropriate. But once the idea has been written down, I tend to go back and read what I wrote and then put in something more fitting, not just let my note or bland name sit there.

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

Indeed. This should have been done in her second draft.

Oh, hey wait ... She never did a second draft.

[collectively.livejournal.com]

I wish she'd hire a ghost-writer. ANYONE who's a better writer than she is. Even if she was still in charge of directing the "plots" of the books, they would be vastly more readable if written by someone who could manage decent dialogue and not constantly repeat themselves.

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

I use placeholders all the time for names/places because I don't want to waste time coming up with one since I got the idea first. I don't usually have trouble coming up with names (I can usually settle on one within 5 minutes) but judging from various writer's advice columns a LOT of people do. So coming up with a name first might be sort of unusual.

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

Wait, LKH is already perfectly aware that her characters grow/shrink and have changing eye colors?

...

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

It makes it somehow worse, doesn't it?

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

It just makes me so much angrier.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

Yep and she doesn't much care otherwise she would have character bibles and would have "hired" someone other than Missy the ravening fangurl as a continuity editor.

[libwitch.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I would think by now either she or a copy editor or one of her much-beleaguered assistants would have drawn up at least spreadsheet that gives basic character attributes: height, weight, hair color, eye color, sexuality (beyond: F8&CS everything), personality quirks.

I mean, for gods sake, hire a passing gamer. They will do it for you! They might even use D&D character sheets to get started!

Normally, an author of a well established series keeps track of all this stuff because they have their own notes. But we all know that LKH is apparently too awesome writes too organically. Ah its hard to keep notes when you just make it up as you go along.

..all that aside, aren't her characters living beings to her, like family? Maybe thats the problem. here. I wonder if she forgets what her daughter looks like too?

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

I would just like you to know how hard I started giggling. Because I thoroughly enjoy making character sheets, and have friends who fill out their D&D sheets like whoa (and it was probably my favorite part when I wasn't getting to play and help story-build).

LKH probably even has friends. Maybe that long-haired guy who inspired the Flirt Scene with the poor waiter.

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

He actually has a real job.

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

You mean his real job isn't to make his Super Hot Girlfriend That We Should All Be Jealous Of a little uncomfortable by victimizing poor unsuspecting waiters who find him attractive? Well, damn. Who'd have thought?

I like how LKH even portrays her friends as two-dimensional, flat, and possibly morally corrupt. Just like her characters!

But that's cool that he has a real job.

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

And my first reaction is OH GOD THEY WENT STRAIGHT TO COPYEDITING? JESUS CHRIST THIS BOOK WILL SUCK HARD.

Seriously. You can't even START copyediting until the developmental stuff is done. Which means they are doing NO developmental shit for this one whatsoever. WHICH MEANS THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE GOOD.

Jesus God in Heaven.