Rejigging Gargoyles: Misha Herwin

 

Rejigging Gargoyles

I’m someone who is very rarely late. I’m never the one running down the platform to catch my train. If that ever did happen then it would be because I arrived so early that I was in time for the earlier one. So looking at the date and realising that I had a blog to write for tomorrow was quite a shock. Under normal circumstances it would have been scheduled days and would be ready to go live at half past the witching hour.

This week however everything has been subsumed by a major rejigging of “A Gathering of Gargoyles.” I thought it was finished and ready to go and an edit would be little more than a hunting down of typos so was totally taken aback when my editor said it needed work. According to her, there were too many climaxes followed by dips that slowed the narrative down. The basic story worked. It just needed to be taken to bits and put back together in a different order.

I read through the ms. I made notes on each chapter and wrote them down of pieces of card, which I laid out on the dining room table. I moved chunks of action around. I wrote my new plan out on A4. I cut and pasted. I read and re-read what I had done to check for continuity errors and character development.

My head whirled. My brain ached. I worked solidly for hours, enjoying the challenge and refusing to let the complexities get me down and I finally cracked it. It’s not finished. This blog is brief because I want to get back to the book, but when it’s done it will be a much better book.