Sun and Clouds

Today is the first day of my month-long editing marathon. Woo! The compulsion to jump all over the book is fairly staggering, but I've resisted successfully, and begun with the Prologue.

The prologue is, rather uniquely, considering the non-linear way I tend to come up with stories, the true starting point of the book. It was a short story I wrote in reaction to some really obnoxiously predictable character/narrative development in (siiiiiigh) the Privateer Press fluff for Warmachine. I wanted to make it mo' bettah--and I wanted to make it have gay sex in it, because, hey, why not? (In all seriousness, erotic fiction is a standpoint from which a lot of my ideas come. I think sex is more key to understanding ourselves and our world than more literature is willing to display) I was also concepting an RPG setting at the time with the ludicrous working title of Special Forces. Then Sun and Clouds came out really good, and was the longest thing I'd ever really created. It was also a big enough departure (written intentionally with very few setting-specific details) that when I started building a larger story around it, I decided to "put my hands together" as it were. Soon, A Barber of Great Renown The Wide and Burning World was born.

All that was left to do here, editing-wise, was to remove a few niggling sentences and the very last vestiges of the original reason I wrote the story. There was nothing crucial to take out, the details being blown out enough that they were neither story-important nor not my own, but I knew there were a few word choices and phrases that I just didn't want as they were. All fixed. No major additions.

The best nugget to come out of the edit: When we were alone together, he shared his lore with me, taught me the ballads, the sagas and songs, and limned the necessity of quiet thought in the grim thrill of war.

I'm nervous about my next chapter, though. Find out why and what I do about it tomorrow!