Technically, he isn't.

He finished writing the book, and it's now in Penguin's flippers, but he still has some revisions to do before the manuscript is complete.

Details details... can't you just let the masses celebrate for JUST A LITTLE before you dash cold water all over our hopes and dreams and fuzzy bunny-rabbit thoughts of Jim actually being DONE for once?

Sheesh.  Meanyheads.

You could also go with the "insert name of object or material being worked with" convention, and that can help distract away from using "Craft" or "Crafter" as a singular name/concept.  This also pulls it further away from 80's movies and stereotypical representations of witches.

So for examples -
A Tinsmith is a nonmagical person who repairs/builds things with tin.
A Tincrafter is a magical person who does the same.

A Woodsmith is a mundane carpenter
A Woodcrafter could maybe do the same things, but probably focuses on intricate decorations or ornaments because the magic is more "elite"

You're broke (or maybe the kingdom has magical sumptuary laws restricting what magical items people can own) so you go to a swordsmith.
You're the heir of a duchy and this is your first "real" sword, so your father the Duke has commissioned a swordcrafter for the work.

First off, apologies for the hugely ginormous point-by-point below.

Also apologies for leaving this thread alone for so long - I've been doing a lot of thinking about it, but it wasn't making sense.   I try to stay away from the keyboard when mentally babbling.

Finally, instead of asking these by PM, I hope it's ok to continue in this thread, in the hopes someone else might have advice or elaborations, or that someone might find the information useful to them as well. 

Righto - into the fray!

Really great discussion thread and I ditto everything said, still I'm not sure we've addressed what lasciel is asking.

I've been fortunate to take some online classes with editors, authors, copyeditors, journalists etc--the hardest, absolutely hardest assignment I faced was--"Post your premise. I (senior editor at major house) will decide which one has legs." You see I'd come with this lovely little plot and three characters that I loved. Scrap that baby. It wasn't even on her 'maybe' list of okay. Somewhere in this forum section was my plea for assistance. I ended up with six decent premises that I thought had staying power with my attention and marketability for a result that might be of interest to a house.

Did any of the editors ever say what criteria they're using to decide what premisi (premises... premae?) were good together, or why certain ones of them were not workable at all?  I've been thinking about this the most, and I have no idea how to proceed. 

My baby plotlings are all over the bloody place - I've got traditional 'swords and horses' adventures, several far-future Sci-Fi stories (all in different far-futures, of course), a recent-history vampire story, urban fantasies... about the only thing they all have in common is that they're not set in the 'vanilla world.'  How can those get smushed together? 

I didn't hear anything from the instructor for sometime. I like to think she was running it past either her personal agent or her companions at work. Bottomline? We ended up combining the 4th and 5th premise, and before I was done writing it I had actually encompassed a 3rd premise.

Was that a collaborative process, or more organic - to be blunt, did the editor come out and say 'well, that's too simple, you need to put x in' or did it just end up "feeling like it fit" in with the rest as you were writing and charting out the plot and the tension points?

I truly believe that our initial thoughts are too common and we have to dig much deeper, painfully deep, for a marketable, workable idea--especially as hopeful debut authors.  I'm speaking premise here NOT HIGH CONCEPT BITE LINES of less than 25 words as Colleen Lindsay shared at DFWCon.

Feel free to PM me, but start with a few simple questions first:

How many subplots and threads can I work into this idea that are, or can be weaved together?

Here is where I've been having my weeks-long existential crisis.  Let me preface this by saying that I am not trying to insult or make any sideways comments about any authors who may seem to be targeted below - I love READING their works. 

I've come to the realization that I manifestly do not want to write epics or trilogies or long huge staggeringly complicated tomes of dense reading stuff.  I feel really bad for saying this, and I almost feel like admitting it means I have no chance to be published or have anyone interested in my work.  I have ideas, I think they're fun - at least worth looking into, and I am committed to trying to write them as fully and complex-ly as they need to be (and that I'm capable of)... but I don't think any of my ideas NEED to be epics.  I LIKE simple one-shot stories, and worlds where a baseline is set, a book or two is written, the interesting idea is finished and solidly done, and then the reader is free to go wandering off on tangents because there's wide open mental space left.

Is that totally awful?

How many characters can I manage and still produce the best work I can do at this point in my craft?

This one I'm ok with - I have the opposite problem, actually.  I get a little character happy and have LOTS of them.  Still, I feel this is related to the above point.  There's this trend where every character in an epic is vitally important to the overall plot at some point, and so the same people keep circling back into the story at different times and places.  I don't necessarily mind that, but I also like the thought of just having mostly ... you know... people.  Moving scenery.  Not plot-vital troves of information and subtext to be teased out and used to further the plot.  Again, I feel a bit of a bad person for saying that.
 

What would be likely tension points on my story plot curve?
Then isolate the tension points and judge how you are going to escalate the tension to drive the plot to the climax.

If your tension points (at a minimum: opening, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 9/10th marks) seem lacking, then don't toss out the premise, but start the layering process to bring in more subplots, more character conflict, more whatever is needed.

I truly believe that 'nodes of contact' as Donald Maass discusses are crucial to a well fleshed out, decent book. Our premises can be fantastic, but if we don't figure out those contact points along with a two sentence premise fairly soon in the process, then we probably will only stumble across a great story idea. Planning for that great story idea before wasting hours of your valuable writing time is essential.

As a technical writing point, this one's hard for me, because I'm still working out the kinks of the basic ideas.  I've basically memorized Jim's writing blog, and that method seems to work well mentally for me. 

I'm not yet to the point of wanting to nail down specific plot activities for all of my plotlings tho - I was hoping for a method of weeding them down BEFORE I get to that point, to save mental effort for a hopefully more likely to be successful payoff.

Best writing Library Lasciel - love your tag name by the way. 

Thanks - I'm a sucker for a fallen angel and a fine alliteration.   

Yeah, warm fuzzies will not improve your writing.  As I tell my friends - I want to know where I can improve, where I'm hopelessly wrong - and what are the holes in the plot that you can drive a star cruiser through.

See, this is what I want, and while I love my friends dearly and have great fun with them, they're really not the people for that type of feedback.

It's irksome.   

Just chipping in that ideas are never the problem with me.  I have a laptop and backup drive FULL of ideas and kernels of stories and series-possibilities. 

The TIME and ENERGY needed to write, and the FUNDING to not have to work so hard at a real job in the meantime, any of those would be greatly appreciated!

So, you know, if you have any of those three things just lying around that you need to get rid of....   

It's early, but I think he might have noticed how very loved and popular he was at Dragon Con last year...

If he comes again, I have a feeling that the staff will realize the error of their ways and give him bigger rooms now.   

Atlanta, Sept 2-5, 2011.

(If not this year, then please don't make us poor dedicated southern fans wait another four years.  I may not survive!)

Alternatively, anywhere in SC, the southern half of NC, or the northern half of GA would be awesome, and I'll be there with bells on.

It's aimed at journalism students for whom English is a second language, but it's the most clear and concise rendering of all the faults of 'legalese' that I've ever seen, and I think it's a good guide to all sorts of writing, not simply journalism.

Here's the article http://www.theamericanscholar.org/writing-english-as-a-second-language/

Hope you find it interesting/useful!