![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfs"That doesn't sound too hard."
Charlie Stross has written about having The Trunk, the place where all the novels that he's written but that will never get published go to die. Many other authors mention The Drawer, that place where manuscripts lie hoping, someday, that market forces will come around and make them marketable once more.
I have The Slush. The Slush lives on my PDA, built weekly by a plucker script that compiles it into a PDB document so I can carry it around. It's my entire Work In Progress folder, and it allows me to review my progress even when I'm not able to open up the laptop and work on something directly.
It also allows me to back over old works. And as I was reading through it, I found the dropped subplot of Sterlings.
Make no mistake, I think Sterlings is a pretty good book. It follows three women (Polly, Rhiane, and Dove) as they try to figure out where and how to live now that their universe has expanded so incredibly with their exposure to the Pendorians, and the romantic (and sexual, this being The Journal Entries, after all) entanglements and hijinks that ensue.
There was an entire subplot to the story, involving Senator Kacea Alfan of Athena, a woman stuck in a wheelchair, and the nominal representative of the "conservative" wing of Sterling thought. There were a number of philosophical points made during her scenes about why the intersection of Pendorians and Ys is so dangerous to the Sterling future and about what "substrate independence" and "substrate comprehensibility" mean to a thinking civilization. Ken and Aaden have a cameo appearance in a critical scene in which Kacea games the negotiations, and wrestles with her own guilt at "selling out" her entire civilization, to get herself Pendorian-level medical attention now, and a panicked scene in Dove and Jaylene's hotel room when they start to realize that the Sterling military contingent is going on alert, locking down the temporary embassy (trapping Rhiane and Ilonca inside), and nearly 10% of the Sterling contingent has "gone missing."
I wimped out, and just cut it. It was about 12,000 words all told, and I just left it on the cutting room floor.
Ah, well. There may well be chances to revive it, but I loathe the idea of revising the book. It's fine the way it is. It stands on its own. This is one of the reasons I'm not comfortable with selling the JE's as books: there's always more story to fit into the interstices of existing storylines.
Charlie Stross has written about having The Trunk, the place where all the novels that he's written but that will never get published go to die. Many other authors mention The Drawer, that place where manuscripts lie hoping, someday, that market forces will come around and make them marketable once more.
I have The Slush. The Slush lives on my PDA, built weekly by a plucker script that compiles it into a PDB document so I can carry it around. It's my entire Work In Progress folder, and it allows me to review my progress even when I'm not able to open up the laptop and work on something directly.
It also allows me to back over old works. And as I was reading through it, I found the dropped subplot of Sterlings.
Make no mistake, I think Sterlings is a pretty good book. It follows three women (Polly, Rhiane, and Dove) as they try to figure out where and how to live now that their universe has expanded so incredibly with their exposure to the Pendorians, and the romantic (and sexual, this being The Journal Entries, after all) entanglements and hijinks that ensue.
There was an entire subplot to the story, involving Senator Kacea Alfan of Athena, a woman stuck in a wheelchair, and the nominal representative of the "conservative" wing of Sterling thought. There were a number of philosophical points made during her scenes about why the intersection of Pendorians and Ys is so dangerous to the Sterling future and about what "substrate independence" and "substrate comprehensibility" mean to a thinking civilization. Ken and Aaden have a cameo appearance in a critical scene in which Kacea games the negotiations, and wrestles with her own guilt at "selling out" her entire civilization, to get herself Pendorian-level medical attention now, and a panicked scene in Dove and Jaylene's hotel room when they start to realize that the Sterling military contingent is going on alert, locking down the temporary embassy (trapping Rhiane and Ilonca inside), and nearly 10% of the Sterling contingent has "gone missing."
I wimped out, and just cut it. It was about 12,000 words all told, and I just left it on the cutting room floor.
Ah, well. There may well be chances to revive it, but I loathe the idea of revising the book. It's fine the way it is. It stands on its own. This is one of the reasons I'm not comfortable with selling the JE's as books: there's always more story to fit into the interstices of existing storylines.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
I am pretty sure others feel this way.
Date: 2008-04-02 05:29 pm (UTC)I discovered your writing back in the day and started reading because of the sex(being honest here.).
I kept reading because I found that I enjoyed not only your writing style but the stories you told.
I keep reading because I have yet to read anything you have put out that has not at least made me stop and think about something, though most pieces you have written I have found to be truly enjoyable.
I would love to read the additional "sterlings" chapters if you ever decide to add them to the archives. I am looking forward to getting my first purchased hard copy of your work (yes, I have a nice collection of you work printed on on my shelf that I printed and bound for my own reading an enjoyment.).
And yet again, if you ever decide that you are ok with sharing your slush file, I know that I would enjoy reading what you had to offer.
MPK
(posting from a blocked sight)
pandakahn.livejournal.com
no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 10:47 pm (UTC)Let it go
Date: 2008-04-04 02:42 am (UTC)