The second edit pass is half complete, which sounds really mealy mouthed doesn’t it? However, this has been a burly day’s work as what I’ve basically done is spent the day not letting the text pull the bullshit it’s been pulling up to now. Each one of the first half of the year’s essays has been read, and the language changed and tightened in pretty much all of them. There are a few which I didn’t touch, a few more which had almost cosmetic work done to them but I’ve been up to my elbows in the guts of most of them all day.
It’s been great.
The really interesting thing is that quite a lot of the endings I really hated a few days ago now read well to me. Some of this is because I’ve tightened the language and some of it is textual Stockholm Syndrome but overall the text is a lot tighter. Of the first 26 essays of the year there are one, maybe two, that still need substantial editing. The rest are good to go.
The other thing I’ve found is that I’m starting to look for other things to put in there. I’ve already talked about the two appendices, and I caught myself, earlier in the week, thinking about adding the other guest-host slots I’ve done for Escape Artists this year. I decided against that, because the whole point of this project is that it’s a collection of Pseudopod stuff. I’ve got a lot of other material as well, but for now, this project’s big enough. The next one, who knows?:)