From everything the books say, there is probably a lot more editing that should be done.
But I'm tired of it. I'm going to go with Papa Heinlein on this (his old school advice was, "You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.")
Heinlein's rule isn't the absolute it seems at first glance, though. A nice essay I read recently talks about this as a process problem. There is a school of writing that says "get the draft out at all costs"; this school reaches an apex with NaNoWriMo, in which you are expected to write a lousy, too-short draft you will clean up later.
Me, I do a lot of editing on the way. When I'm re-reading a chapter to figure out if they mentioned the dingus and what the fellow's first name was, I also notice where I doubled a word or forgot to close a parenthesis. It seems to work; the grammar checker found very few errors of that type to alert me on.
I also do deeper structural edits. Now, they sound like the sort of thing that should have been caught in the outline and "fixed" then. But things grow organically. So while writing the climax I might think of a cool setting to use, and then I'll go back and plant references in earlier chapters and move some stuff around so the climax can happen there. And while I'm there, it is basically a second or third or fourth pass through the dialog and descriptions that are in that chapter.
Which means I tend to write a fairly clean draft, overall. So when I read the "standard advice" about doing four drafts until it gets good, I have to reflect that, again, is a descriptor of process, not a proscription of universal needs. I don't have to sit down saying, "I am doing a re-write" to be basically accomplishing a re-write.
(Which is sort of the argument I have against the pantser v. outliner battles; neither are the purists they claim to be. They just categorize what they do as falling into a specific pattern. "I wasn't outlining, I was just writing some rough drafts of possible scenes.")
Anyhow, I have it with a beta reader. It may go on from there, even to a native German speaker (who is sure to be horrified at the way "Herr Satz" mangles both languages.) And I'm not intending to do much past react to any complaints those readers might have.
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Which sends me on a tiny language rant, a take-that on the kind of phrasebook speak where there is always a single word-for-word translation. I think this is a place invented languages often fall down on.
The closest you can get to a universal "Hi!" in Italian is "Ciao." It can be used at most times of day, and for that matter, for goodbye. But it is somewhat too casual for a good speaker to use with people he doesn't know well.
In my story, the first "Hello" is "Bueno Sera" (It is evening, and he hasn't been introduced to her.) Later, she greets him with "Buongiorno" and he returns with "Salve." (He's being "oddly formal" at that moment.) She also says "Ciao" to a friend.
And that's just Standard Italian; for this book I made no mention that almost every Italian is bilingual, speaking both that and one of the regional dialects so disparate they can be mutually incomprehensible.
I did mention in the book that they speak a regional German in Bavaria, but the only example I gave of Bayern was counting as "Oans, zwoa..." instead of the usual “Eins, zwei, drei.."
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So I downloaded Cheetah3D and am getting into making the proper art for the cover. I'm rusty on 3d and on drawing and I'm feeling wiped out by that intensive editing work so I don't expect progress fast. This is really a better time to be dreaming a little. Say, coming up with what to write the next time I'm in a writing place, so I don't have to sit around waiting for the ideas to form.
As of the inevitable re-reading I had to do in checking edits in context and making sure no pages had dropped out in the process, I find myself not unhappy. It isn't exactly what I set out to write. The action does eventually end up just over the top although there is a slow boil in getting there. There isn't a lot of digging but there is an archaeological sensibility that makes it not quite and not just history-based. It is fun how many things from myth and history end up getting referred back to and given connections. And I achieved the "deep dive" into Athens, and it feels sort of right; she had to take a detour for half the book but, at last, I get to really sit down and hang out in Athens.
Can I do this again but do it better? By "better" I mean more focused, with less of a "If this is Tuesday this must be Belgium" approach and more of a single culture being the focus. And less of the oh-so-fun but somewhat extraneous details. And more sustained action. But, more importantly than that, a proper internal/external conflict, with Penny really wrestling with her inner demons (this book the conflict was pretty much, "Hey, wanna be a hero? Why not?") And with a strong antagonist who interacts nicely and who is properly visible to the reader (this one, the antagonists are largely masked, although the big round of edits put them a lot more on stage).
But things changed for me over that last push. New ideas showed up when things were bubbling, and some of the older ideas seem less attractive.
So here's the current line-up:
The transhumanist vampire-werewolf milSF love triangle is not interesting me quite as much at the moment. Maybe it will grow on me.
I'm having strong ideas towards Space Opera. I've talked before of doing a Used Furniture story. And there's the idea of an actual opera, or rather a group of performers...Downside is that I am already far too drawn towards cliche and kitsch and the intersection where make-believe hits reality, and there are too many excuses here. Well, in space opera, really. Like Epic Fantasy, it runs on Fable.
Sort of similar in the used furniture and big Space Opera tropes is a concept I'm calling The Tiki Stars. I'm talking retro-culture at full blast, Rat Pack in space, Moon Zero Two. Thing is this kinda wants to go in a Men's Adventure direction already and then there's the Tiki problem (as someone put it, imagine you are a good Catholic and you get served a beer in a glass shaped like the Virgin Mary.) It would be fun to write but, ugh, I'd probably have to pick a Sad Puppy nom de plume or would be Oh John Ringo No.
Although I've said I'd like to take a break, Fox and Hounds does seem a likely project to tackle next. Yes; I made the commit and all the Athena Fox titles will have fox-things. Starting with The Fox Knows Many Things. My beta reader already tells me she likes it.
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