#atopthetreesbeneaththemountains — Public Fediverse posts

My first step in editing "Atop the Trees, Beneath the Mountains" needs to be a high-level pass where I address all the notes I left for myself.

You know, the sort of thing where I wrote ((future Sara will figure this out)) and then laughed to myself because I got out of puzzling something difficult.

Now I am Future Sara, and I am *real* mad at Past Sara.

A lot of these notes are simply places where I noted possible inconsistencies, though. Using a fantasy conlang means that I get pretty fluent in my own languages, but less-used terms (like names of regions) don't stick in my head as well, and I never want to stop writing to look it up. Is it the Edsa Mountains? Edsha? Edja? Which sound did I end up using for that S? Am I using lo:sa'lvaren rules or Interlingual rules?

In a rough draft of 322,000 words, these kinds of corrections, final decisions, and minor rewrites might be...plodding.

Another to-do in this "phase" of the project is to look at the conlang itself, and the names I chose for characters. I made the conlang of lo:sa'lvaren before I wrote almost anything else, and I designed the language in tandem with worldbuilding. Hence I was making choices about the language based upon an initial set of rules and priorities. I was thinking about things like, how does this language reflect the culture's colonialist ways? How do I use this set of "sounds" that I like from Tolkien/esque conlangs like Quenya in ways that are novel and authentic? I did a lot of generation and regeneration, changing prefixes and suffixes, and etc etc etc. And I use lo:sa'lvaren words fairly freely in the text to describe concepts without a direct obvious parallel in IRL Western culture.

But now I'm getting to the point where this is a Real Book, and Real People are going to read it. The way that the words *look* is different from how they are *pronounced*. I have a great lo:sa'lvaren accent. Nobody else possibly could.

* Do I want the names easier to sound out?
* Should names sound more like common names in my neck of America? Example (not from my book): a fantasy character named Elyja is memorable because a brain easily transposes it to Elijah. A character named I'edasve (which is in my book) is not as memorable.
* Do I want to change or limit diacritics for ease of reading?
* Are all the terms used necessary, or would it be better to use English approximates, or even compound words adequately describing the concept?

To illustrate the kind of decision I haven't yet made, I'm considering the common words xilcadis and sins'os.

Patricians in the Republic hold seats in xilcadise, each of which has a sins'os. A xilcadis is a palace complex including the palace itself, small secondary estates owned by the a'lve|lder of Houses under its purview, and a city where only manumitted Low A'lvar and High A'lvar are allowed to live. A sins'os is a village attached to a xilcadis, a slums, where bonded Low A'lvar live in order to support the xilcadis.

I have used these terms throughout the course of the book, but little is lost if refer to things specifically rather than broadly (palace OR city OR manors). Alternatively, palace-complex as a compound is clearer and easier to remember.

Even if I continue using a conlang word, xilcadis is weird for English speakers to read. It made sense to design the word that way when I was generating the language by my rules. But now do I wanna go back and spot-change it? It doesn't HAVE to follow the rules. If I want, I can do an entirely aesthetic overhaul of lo:sa'lvaren.

Then again, committing to these changes steps away from one of the *other* reasons I designed the language as-such: I wanted it to feel foreign and distancing for readers. I want them to feel very fish-out-of-water with the A'lvar, so that when readers reach other cultures, it's easy to feel a lot cozier by simply making the language *easier*. Still--from an accessibility (and marketing) standpoint, the book starts off among the A'lvar, with their lofty opaque language of strange words, and that is a tough nut to crack.

So yes, that is the phase of editing I am at right now. A 322,000-word book written over three years shouldn't take three years to edit. But. It will be a bit of work.

#AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains #amWriting #amEditing #WritingCommunity #WritingFantasy #FantasyNovels #HowToWrite #HowToEdit #HowToUsePostsOnMastodonToProcrastinateRealWork

Just realized I'm actually scared to finish #AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains. I've been working on it for about three years now. I took brief breaks off to write two other shorter books, and I've written a lot of short stories and partial manuscripts in the intervening time, but mostly ATTBTM has consumed me these last three years and I am SCARED to STOP.

I see a clear route to the end, which is a recent development. I've always known how it's going to end, but actually getting there was murky. I had so much to figure out before that could happen. Now I've got almost everything figured out, besides the little details that will come together as I do the actual writing, and...I am scared.

For one thing: What if I reach the end and I'm like, this is it? That's what I did all this work for? What if it's this big anticlimax of a book, and it turns out the whole thing for me was the experience, but the final product isn't impactful upon my life in any way? (Find no traditional publisher, self-publish, find no readers, book fades into my past)

But also, once it's done, I have to start writing other books again. I have to actually look at my standing urban fantasy universe and either commit to returning or...commit to NOT. I have to start marketing books again. I have to treat this like a JOB again.

I also don't really want to leave this universe. It's beautiful and there's still so much more in it that I haven't gotten my fill of writing/mentally living inside. :(

OTOH, what if I finish the book and I feel amazing for having committed to this uniquely MASSIVE project, and people like it? And I do publish it and readers end up enjoying it? What if I find a small but loyal audience that gives my life sustained meaning again, like I did with the Descentverse?

There's no decision to be made here. I'm gonna finish the book. The itch to keep working is going to FAR overrule the itch to turn stagnant so I don't have to change my exact current situation. I might even finish the book soonish, though I'm still looking at another 50,000 words of material maybe. I don't have to worry about this, regardless. Not yet.

#AmWriting #WritingCommunity #WritingFantasy #Scribbledons #SFF #LGBTQwriters #Writing #MastoWriters #UrbanFantasy #EpicFantasy