Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Pemberley House Status Report

After a series of fits and starts over the two years since Mike and I discovered the partial manuscript, mostly complete outline, and associated notes in PJF's basement, I am finally writing in earnest.

First came the OCR conversion of the chapters that PJF wrote, and cleanup of the text. Them came a comparison of the information in the chapters, the outline, and the notes. All of this was also compared to the WNF as PJF finally had it in TA and DS:HAL. I made decisions in order to ensure that continuity and the WNF genealogies were not violated. I also had to clarify how the Curse worked, how it was passed from family member to family member, and quadruple check the genealogy to make sure our heroine was actually subject to the Curse! (Believe me, the background work on all this was a lot more complex than this short paragraph makes it sound.)

Then there was the question of the eroticism in the novel. I prefer not to change any of PJF's original words in the ms., wherever I can avoid it. So that's how I'm writing it, at least for now. I may get different direction later and then I'll have to go back and revise the ms. from R-rated to PG-13. We'll see, but for now, this is the course I've decided upon.

After being sidetracked for almost a year to do the Crossovers book, I returned to PH in late summer this year and finished the outline at the beginning of August, the night before leaving for Archon 31/FarmerCon II, in fact. The outline was about 3/4 complete. The last 1/4 was more notes and ideas than a true outline, but there was certainly enough there that I can confidently say that I did not make up any of the major plot directions or resolutions.

Next, I finished the first incomplete chapter . It was quite difficult getting started on this, since the ms. ends mid-chapter, mid-sentence. I wonder how PJF would have finished that sentence?

I've now added 5 additional chapters, and last night passed a mental hurdle. The word count has now more than doubled from Phil's original ms.

Okay, with all the posts tonight, my intent was to cover the state of the project past-to-present. Going forward, I will post occasional progress updates and samples, if anyone wants them, but there will not be a flood of posts as there was tonight.

Thanks for being here.

4 comments:

Christopher Paul Carey said...

This blog is absolutely fantastic, "Abby." I wish I would have thought of the idea of blogging the writing of my first novel on a privatized blog, and then making it public later. That's something I could wrap my head around. Maybe I'll do that for book 2 or 3.

Anyway, great stuff here. I look forward to following your progress.

"Abbey Tarnhelm" said...

Many thanks, Chris!

I appreciate you stopping by...

-Abbey

Christopher Paul Carey said...

Darn, I misspelled your name. Sorry about that. Got it now. Abbey like a church. :-)

"Abbey Tarnhelm" said...

No problem!