One more time

I know I said it before (yesterday), but I'll say it again today: I should finish my rough draft tonight. I had some other things come up last night, and I didn't quite finish. I did finish chapter 31 and start on the epilogue. But, since I had to put in a new thermostat for the furnace last night, I didn't quite have enough time to finish the epilogue. But I've probably got less than a thousand words to go, so it will be done today.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: The original Star Wars trilogy. With the commentaries on. I love watching movies with the commentaries running--if I've seen the movie often enough, obviously. I've gotten through A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, just have to get to Return of the Jedi and I'll be finished. Maybe I'll get the Prequel Trilogy from the library and watch those as well.

One thing that I've discovered from the commentaries is that George Lucas has been editing each version of the movies ever since they came out. The original Star Wars wasn't labelled as "Episode 4: A New Hope" until it was released on VHS the first time. The studios thought that calling the first movie in a series "episode 4" would confuse the audience.

I knew he'd been editing them more in recent years, changing little things here and there, but I had no idea he'd started it right from the beginning. And then that made me wonder, What if writers edited each printing of their books that was published? What if they went in and said, Hey, before you print that next run, let me change this paragraph around? Or, Let me add some more dialogue to show the relationship between these two characters a little?

Just a thought. I know it does happen on occasions--Stephen King recently published a new version of his book The Gunslinger, the first book in the Dark Tower series, so that it would agree with the rest of the series better. But I can't think of too many other instances of that happening, and I guess when you're one of the bestselling authors in the world, you can do about anything you want.