Yeah, I might be dreaming of Tioman, but I am working. On a Sunday. Reading. Can reading a novel be work? Yep, when you’ve already read it umpteen times over the past few months. Hell, when you wrote the danged thing!
I am reading both book 1 and 2 again, before book 2 goes to copy edit, because editors have suggested a few brilliant improvements to make to the latter.
The trouble is this: when you add a line on page 22, it has this horrible habit of making nonsense of something on p44. So you alter that, only to find that now something on p65 seems repetitive. So you alter that. But then, that gives the plot a hiccup, if not real indigestion…and so it goes on. Which of course is why you sometimes scratch your head over something in the books you read, thinking to yourself, how the heck could the writer have written that twice and not noticed? Or whatever.
So I am reading book 1 (which is not to be altered as it is going or has gone to the printers already) to make sure that something I do in book 2’s tweaking doesn’t make nonsense of something in book 1. Got it?
Now all non-writers are still scratching their heads, still wondering why I have to re-read. How can an author possibly forget something they wrote if it is a part important enough to affect the plot? Believe me, they can. And do.
The cartography is to tantalize…the talented Perdy Phillips has produced a humdinger of a map, a tiny portion seen above, and it has gone to the design team at Harper Collins. Wow. I feel publication is really getting close.
Quite the contrary Glenda, in my case anyway, I cannot imagine how you do remember what you have written before enough so you don't screw up later books. I recently read a series where I was quite convinced the author had forgotten something he/she had written in book one, however, there it was in book three after all with all the consequences following. Lets face it, us readers would notice it, even if an author didn't so you have a hard job on your hands which this reader much appreciates.
I empathise with your dilemma.
I have noticed that when I am reading and editing my own work (computer programs) sometimes my brain reads what I know should be there rather than what is actually written.