MAMM : PATTERING VERSUS PAPER

I've been long-hand writing lately, then transcribing the pages (and pages, and pages, and pages, and pages) into my working file. 

Pretty soon I'll have enough done that way to read the whole of my to-date book and see if I can tell the difference.

Pattering is when I'm at my keyboard.

When I enter the handwritten pages, I do a little editing as I go along but am surprised at how little that really is. I've also been a bit surprised at how seldom I have to go back and add or change anything. Writing in ink, it's not like I can just erase what I just wrote and fix it. There are some notes and cross-outs and margin scribbles but not nearly as many as I anticipated.

In the past couple of days I've handwritten well over seventy (70) pages of text. I'm not looking forward to the transcription of it all, believe you me, but am kind of curious as to how many pages it will translate into and to finding out what the word count is. 

This is the text for the 'Mamm Story' half of Mamm of Dunnottar; it's already longer and more detailed than any of the other books - but I knew ahead of time it was going to be. 

And so ... tomorrow I reckon I'll find out what I've wrought and hope to high heaven I don't have to rewrite the whole works.

Transcribing it will be bad enough.

Another difference between this book and the others is that I'm writing the 'Mamm Story' half of it in its entirety first. Then I'll fit the 'Dunnottar Story' into it. It's a bit of an experiment as the others were written basically 1-2-1-2-1-2 as far as the dual story lines go.

One of the reasons I can do this one the way I am is that the 'Mamm Story' largely has to fit itself into an actual historic set of events - the others I had no idea what was going to happen next in either of the story lines. 

This is still fiction, mind you, but the times are well-documented (relatively speaking) starting with the dates covered in this book. 

Anyway, because the 'Mamm Story' needs to follow a fairly specific path, I've got to get myself onto that path and stay there straight through without so much of the 'time zone' travel. Bad enough to keep track of my own time and one other one - when it's THREE, I end up with jet lag and forget when and where I'm supposed to be.

As the story lines begin to converge in this book, I figure I'm better off doing them one at a time.

Wish me luck.