MUCKING ABOUT IN SENTENCES: Editing Chapters

On my whiteboard this week is a quote from writer Annie Dillard:

It’s a privilege to muck about in sentences all morning.

So true! I’ve been heads-down editing Chapters 2 and 3, after reading them out loud and finding out what needs to be changed. As part of the process, I’ve also incorporated the recent feedback I’ve received from my “friendly readers”: Jen, Lynn and Mr. Busy.

Most. Fun. Ever.

I mean, really. What a privilege: I’m wallowing around in 1864, a time when the pristine face of Muskoka was being permanently changed by axe blows. I’m reading the memoirs of a Muskoka steamship captain, trying to pull everything I think I will need before I have to return this book to the library. I’m hunting down 19th century population figures for Gravenhurst and Bracebridge, and discovering first-hand stories from several surveyors and settlers. 

Speaking of surveyors and settlers:

• James Bridgland is still my favourite surveyor – he gets top marks for bluntness; says the Muskoka Road was “never  even tolerably good.”
• Settler, newspaper publisher and Muskoka promoter Thomas McMurray wins for hyperbole. Everything he writes about Muskoka is suspect – he was just so darn keen about the place.

As part of the editing of these two chapters, I’ve had to do some more research. I’ve had to look hard at the Muskoka district, to understand where the rivers flow, where the rapids and waterfalls are and which direction the granite ridges run. All of these things, of course, affected the surveyors, road-builders and settlers. Luckily I’ve discovered that I like maps and geography almost as much as sentences!

Other random things I’ve learned this week:

• The “surveyors’ chain” used by all the 19th century Muskoka Road surveyors was invented in 1620 by an English mathematician who was also a clergyman. I think you’d need some divine inspiration to come up with a gadget that synthesized two measuring systems, one based on the number four and one based on the number ten. This story may earn its own sidebar in the book.
• The famous prize turnip (no, I’m still not sick of talking about it!) was grown in some of the worst land Muskoka had to offer. This success story doesn’t do anything to support the fact that it was desperately hard to farm in the Muskoka district. I’ll have to figure out how to deal with that.

Even with all the changes and additional research, my word count is still creeping up overall. Privilege and progress!