I have run round the house yelling 'I'm finished! Hurrah! I'm finished!' about six times in the last fortnight. It would be embarrassing, except I have an unusually high shame threshold. But this time, I think I really am finished. I've filled in all the plot holes, sorted out the bits that made my husband angry/confused when he read it. I explained things that made no sense. Though I didn't do a great deal to improve the description, I did massively expand the scope of the Clockwork Empire. I already knew I'd skimped on this, but had decided it would be fine. Apparently, it was not fine.
There's nothing quite so stimulating to the imagination as hearing your reader say 'not the same bloody laboratory with the same bloody 'parquet' floor and gas lights hissing' about six hundred times as they read your carefully crafted tome. So I added a massive series of warehouses, a family home, an Admiral, several ministers and a scarlet and gold throne room (see picture above).
When I'd done, I didn't much feel like dealing with the dialogue - varying it for Victorians, super-powerful atemporal beings etc. What I really felt like was a nice nap. So I lay on the carpet (so as not to enjoy it) and had one. When I woke up, I got on with the dialogue and guess what?
I am actually, really, truly, genuinely finished.
Until the next time I read it...
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