The perils of preparing web-downloads

[msagara]

I am attempting, for the third time in my life, to have slightly more useful information and stuff available on my very under-utilized web-space.

Some of this involves putting up first chapters of various published novels on-line for download or .html perusal. But...the only file formats I have for these chapters are the ones they were submitted in. So I'm opening up what was a working file, and I'm reading it and trying to make sure that it more or less matches the later line-edited, copy-edited published version.

And because I'm doing this, I'm looking at sentences that I wrote fifteen years ago...and I'm trying, desperately, not to revise those sentences now. Or some of the paragraphs. Normally, when looking at a book, I don't have this impulse (I may, on the other hand, have the usual despairing but I could do this so much better now ones, but those are natural, I think, for anyone who is looking at work that is fifteen years old). But since I'm looking at a file...

An intervention may be required.

Comments

[msss.livejournal.com]

Could you farm it out to someone who doesn't have any writing talent whatsoever?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Boy I hear ya.

[manga-crow.livejournal.com]

Ow, that would be seriously difficult. An intervention may be required indeed^^

Seriously though, I think it might be better handed off to someone else. The temptation for perfection is too strong. I think the movie industry aid it best "movies aren't ever finished; they just run out of time" - deadlines serve a very healthy purpose. Give someone the file and a copy of the book and have them match them up.

The last thing you need is to try to start writing another project; especially if it's one you've already finished :p

[sksperry.livejournal.com]

Hey, if Stephen King can do it... :-)

[ovirginsaint.livejournal.com]

Man, if you come up with a way to deter yourself, share with me so I can keep my husband from doing that to stories that he's written and are good and all of a sudden *hates*. I wouldn't mind it so much, except that the parts I like the most are the parts he hates the most XD

But hey, more of an excuse to visit your website during work hours <3

[estara.livejournal.com]

I assume you still have author copies of the books in question: how about scanning the first few pages in? And then just checking with the analysing OCR software whether they messed up some spelling. Abby Fine Reader is pretty good, I recall.

Then you have exactly the published version.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I have a Highlander tie-in novel I wrote about ten years ago that's up online (because hey, it's not like I can sell it) and every time I look at it I have exactly the impulse you're suffering from. :) I love the story, but the words could be so much better! :)