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Revisions & repaging of bks 1 & 2 of "It's A Furries' Life"!
13 years ago
Notes by a white lion.
In the immortal words of any writer who has ever written a serious work, “Hmmm, I think I can write that better.” It IS true that in the passage of time, things can look “fresh” again and this has happened to me here. It’s been a couple of years since it was completed and about a year since I went back and added the chapter headings, February 25th, 2011. That took a bit of time and effort as it wasn’t as simple as dropping them in. I had to place them logically. It did involve some minor rewrite adjustments but nothing truly major.
I did that, reposted it here to FA and it’s been “sitting here” since. Because I knew it would take some time to do, I did not do one other thing at that time and that was to re-page the book into a “normal” book page format. That means fewer words on each page and when I did that the book jumped from 799 pages to 1,021; WHOOT! This was my main intention at coming back to the book this time, but when I saw the dramatic difference in the amount of pages I knew I was in for a long effort to fit it into the new page size. So I decided that I would just “bite the bullet” and go through and review the entire book as I did my re-paging
Every page, from first to last has been reread. Nearly every page has had some adjustment done to it. Many pages of new dialog have been added and some relatively small bits have been removed. A lot of the minor modifications are things related to speech. Having done four novels in the series and I was just starting book five when I decided to suspend doing that in favor of doing this, the characters have fixed speech patterns now and I’ve done a lot of retroactive “matching” so that they “sound the same in all five books. It’s a minor thing in one way, but I feel a very important thing from a continuity standpoint.
Another great advantage of going back so long after the fact and after one has written several more books are that you now know “things in the future”. I have added a good amount of new scenes here and there that “hint” or lightly touch upon the different things to come in the future books. And, at the same time, now knowing the future, I could expand some scenes in knowing better motivations and reasons behind the character’s thoughts or actions. I would say, because I haven’t actually kept a “running total”, that about twenty pages total of new dialog has been added throughout the entire novel.
I so humbly both thank you and apologize at the same time for “causing” you to have to download and reread this again. But I assure you it is well worth it, the story, in sum total, remains the same. There’s not one sudden plot twist or change that has been done. However, at the same time, the book has been majorly altered from its original incarnation and I take and accept full responsibility for that. It’s now grown, with the combination of the re-paging and the added material to a final total of 1,009 pages!
Is this effort worthy of comparison to either Shakespeare or Dickens? Most likely “A Furries’ Life” will fall a bit short. But still, reading and writing was always my strongest and most enjoyed subjects in school and I know of both my talents and abilities. Yes, as the author, OF COURSE I’m biased, but I know enough about writing to know this ain’t lion poop.
So start anew with book one and then move on and through books two, three and four. Now that I’ve done this, it’s back to writing book five and quite likely at least a book six. After that…”we’ll see”.
As always and forever,
“SEMPER FURRY”
Henry A. Smith
Noting the reposting here of A Furries’ Life Book Two in a revised normal page layout. Like book one it was originally written on a larger page format to put more on each page, but upon second thought on it I’ve decided to go with the standard page sizing of footers and headers. The book has therefore grown by many pages for simply doing that, but it remains basically the same in content. For book two there are no real major additions or subtractions, only a few instances where I’ve either added or taken away a bit. It does amount to a few additional pages in total, but in both cases the amount is minimal.
Mostly, here in book two’s case, I’ve done continuity work on speech patterns mainly. With many of the characters using “abbreviated” English, in quick and partial example, da’, an’, ov’a, ‘em and so on, if a character says a certain word a certain way they should always say that word in that same way. Being it takes more than a year to write each book, one can forget those speech nuances past the obvious always used common words. So first the re-paging effort was done here then I went through the whole book to catch my occasional mistakes of not abbreviating some words all of the time. Yes, ‘tis a small thing in one way and quite likely close to inconsequential for most who might read this. But though many might never notice, I would and for me that is reason enough.
Do trust me, a good writer spends just about the same amount of time editing and proofing as they do actually writing their stories. No matter how well you think you write something that very first time, after working onward and then coming back to look at it again a few days or a few weeks later it gives you those proverbial fresh eyes to see it with anew. AND, as good as you are, as careful as you are you’re guaranteed to find mistakes. Or, if not an actual mistake, surely you’ll find that you now realize that a certain sentence, paragraph or perhaps even a whole passage can be “said” better and so that’s what you do…you say it better.
I’m ever so proud of what I’ve done here. Not ever saying it’s absolutely perfect in each and every way, I’d never seem that arrogant to ever say that, but I know what I’ve done is good and very good indeed. As a parent is naturally proud of their good child, I’m as proud of my good work. Please, please enjoy it; truly, my heart and soul have gone into it. I think you will…
Always and forever,
"SEMPER FURRY!"
Henry A. Smith
I did that, reposted it here to FA and it’s been “sitting here” since. Because I knew it would take some time to do, I did not do one other thing at that time and that was to re-page the book into a “normal” book page format. That means fewer words on each page and when I did that the book jumped from 799 pages to 1,021; WHOOT! This was my main intention at coming back to the book this time, but when I saw the dramatic difference in the amount of pages I knew I was in for a long effort to fit it into the new page size. So I decided that I would just “bite the bullet” and go through and review the entire book as I did my re-paging
Every page, from first to last has been reread. Nearly every page has had some adjustment done to it. Many pages of new dialog have been added and some relatively small bits have been removed. A lot of the minor modifications are things related to speech. Having done four novels in the series and I was just starting book five when I decided to suspend doing that in favor of doing this, the characters have fixed speech patterns now and I’ve done a lot of retroactive “matching” so that they “sound the same in all five books. It’s a minor thing in one way, but I feel a very important thing from a continuity standpoint.
Another great advantage of going back so long after the fact and after one has written several more books are that you now know “things in the future”. I have added a good amount of new scenes here and there that “hint” or lightly touch upon the different things to come in the future books. And, at the same time, now knowing the future, I could expand some scenes in knowing better motivations and reasons behind the character’s thoughts or actions. I would say, because I haven’t actually kept a “running total”, that about twenty pages total of new dialog has been added throughout the entire novel.
I so humbly both thank you and apologize at the same time for “causing” you to have to download and reread this again. But I assure you it is well worth it, the story, in sum total, remains the same. There’s not one sudden plot twist or change that has been done. However, at the same time, the book has been majorly altered from its original incarnation and I take and accept full responsibility for that. It’s now grown, with the combination of the re-paging and the added material to a final total of 1,009 pages!
Is this effort worthy of comparison to either Shakespeare or Dickens? Most likely “A Furries’ Life” will fall a bit short. But still, reading and writing was always my strongest and most enjoyed subjects in school and I know of both my talents and abilities. Yes, as the author, OF COURSE I’m biased, but I know enough about writing to know this ain’t lion poop.
So start anew with book one and then move on and through books two, three and four. Now that I’ve done this, it’s back to writing book five and quite likely at least a book six. After that…”we’ll see”.
As always and forever,
“SEMPER FURRY”
Henry A. Smith
Noting the reposting here of A Furries’ Life Book Two in a revised normal page layout. Like book one it was originally written on a larger page format to put more on each page, but upon second thought on it I’ve decided to go with the standard page sizing of footers and headers. The book has therefore grown by many pages for simply doing that, but it remains basically the same in content. For book two there are no real major additions or subtractions, only a few instances where I’ve either added or taken away a bit. It does amount to a few additional pages in total, but in both cases the amount is minimal.
Mostly, here in book two’s case, I’ve done continuity work on speech patterns mainly. With many of the characters using “abbreviated” English, in quick and partial example, da’, an’, ov’a, ‘em and so on, if a character says a certain word a certain way they should always say that word in that same way. Being it takes more than a year to write each book, one can forget those speech nuances past the obvious always used common words. So first the re-paging effort was done here then I went through the whole book to catch my occasional mistakes of not abbreviating some words all of the time. Yes, ‘tis a small thing in one way and quite likely close to inconsequential for most who might read this. But though many might never notice, I would and for me that is reason enough.
Do trust me, a good writer spends just about the same amount of time editing and proofing as they do actually writing their stories. No matter how well you think you write something that very first time, after working onward and then coming back to look at it again a few days or a few weeks later it gives you those proverbial fresh eyes to see it with anew. AND, as good as you are, as careful as you are you’re guaranteed to find mistakes. Or, if not an actual mistake, surely you’ll find that you now realize that a certain sentence, paragraph or perhaps even a whole passage can be “said” better and so that’s what you do…you say it better.
I’m ever so proud of what I’ve done here. Not ever saying it’s absolutely perfect in each and every way, I’d never seem that arrogant to ever say that, but I know what I’ve done is good and very good indeed. As a parent is naturally proud of their good child, I’m as proud of my good work. Please, please enjoy it; truly, my heart and soul have gone into it. I think you will…
Always and forever,
"SEMPER FURRY!"
Henry A. Smith
