'Bob' Tisch, and the Blue is flown at half-mast, again.

Preston Robert Tisch, who with his older brother built a multibillion-dollar business empire and who himself was postmaster general, half-owner of the New York Giants football team and leader of many of the city's top business groups, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 79 and also had a home in Harrison, N.Y.

The cause was a brain tumor, said Jeffrey Stewart, spokesman for the family.

Wellington Mara, the co-owner of the Giants with Mr. Tisch, died on Oct. 25.




Damn. Okay, so neither of them were even close to being spring chickens. But it still sucks.

revisions, phase two

When last we heard from the Author, she was busy reading and rereading her revisions letter, scribbling down notes and ideas and fixits, and communicating with her editor about some of the same (and also blueskying over the title for #4, but that's another topic entirely)


The past few days have seen me move into phase two, which is where I take those notes and ideas, and turn them into Story. This involves:

1. Going through the manuscript itself, page by page, and adding a line here, a line there, to correct small details and oversights pinged by madame Editor. This is the easy part, mostly, and allows me to look at the entire manuscript with a new perspective. I also find things there that she might have missed, seeing with my new critical eyes. I have, at this point, gone into Editor Mode -- my brain has forgotten that I wrote this, y'see, so it's Just Another Line Edit, and I can be cool and professional about killing my darlings. Mostly.

2. Pulling out a pad of lined paper and writing new scenes to fix, replace or otherwise correct things that weren't working properly. This is tougher than #1, but more fun -- I'm back into Creative Mode, here.

Next up: fitting all those new scenes into the existing manuscript. Then I do another read of the entire thing, to make sure the bits all fit and flow, and I haven't introduced new ohshits into the text. Some folk read it out loud -- my voice isn't strong enough to do that, although I will read passages to the cats, if I find myself uncertain about something. They generally tell me to kill it and start again. Cats are like that.