Opal
Started taking another pass through Opal, in the first chapter muttering darkly, "I don't know how I could have made this any plainer," because, dammit, Noon was being downright gracious (for Noon). However, I started to notice difficulty in chapter 2. Couldn't figure out what it was, because the text was all there, and then realised I could hardly see my punctuation marks. When Orion published LEGACIES, the copy editor switched all my double quotes to single quotes. So subsequently, I wrote with single quotes. However I've also been in the habit of switching off smart quotes, because of the way they get gibberished by UNIX systems. That, coupled with my bottom-end laser printer's spacing added up to make my quote marks almost invisible in a lot of places, so dialogue, description and interpolation are all running together. I know I can't stand reading even mundane work that's unpunctuated, never mind the kind of complexities I'm throwing in in OPAL. So I think part of the problem is the punctuation. There are other problems: Noon is not nearly so gracious later on, when he's unsure of himself. And there are sections of the story I have to rethink. But just putting in proper quotation marks may well make a considerable difference. Assuming my toner cartridge holds out. A trip to Staples may be on the cards this weekend.
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