Iiiiiii…have been meaning to post, and just not doing it because I’ve been working, and don’t want to distract myself from work. But! I got an extension on the book so I’m going to take a minute to do a short blog.
I went to Eastercon the last weekend of March, and it was WONDERFUL, but I haven’t had enough time to blog about it. Hopefully next week when I’m done with this book, which…
I’m ALMOST done with the 6th Dublin Driver book. There I was, 60K into a 70K book, the end in sight, but…it was Messed Up. Not terribly badly Messed Up, but enough that I was really frustrated with it. I knew it wouldn’t take TOO MUCH to fix, and that I COULD do it in the remaining four days or whatever that I had, but I would be stressed and miserable. So I emailed my editor to ask for a week extension, which I had Zero Doubt she would give me (because it’s not like they drop everything to read the book the moment it lands on their desk), and then I spent the rest of last week…
…falling asleep over the manuscript.
GOD I hate editing, guys. It’s so boring. I find it so difficult to read my own work for edits. I don’t mind reading it for FUN (especially well after the fact), but for edits, when I’m trying to do a close read, looking for problems, my GOD it’s dull. Even if I’m like “Okay! Let’s do this! Lots of energy and mental preparation! It’s all good!” then ten minutes later I’m like “snxxxxxt.”
But I finally managed to get through it, and it really is mostly okay, which I knew. It’s just there was some stuff that needed shoring up and some other stuff that needed paring down, and a number of things that needed me to figure out what the hell I was doing, and I think I’ve done all that now.
So I’ve spent this week going through my notes again and again, gradually shoring up the storyline, figuring out where things could be shoved in, and I tell you what, guys, it always feels REALLY AWKWARDLY SHOVED IN when I’m finding places to add stuff, but then once it’s there I’m like “oh yeah that works fine.” I deleted about 2k from the book in one fell swoop, but have also put that much back into it with new/stronger/more useful scenes, so now that I’ve finally got all the support structure in, I’m actually a leeeeeetle beet ahead of where I was in terms of wordcount. I’m not any farther in terms of reaching the end, except now all the bits I need to make the end actually work are there, so I guess it’s all in how you slice it.
I’m going to try to finish it over the weekend, which will make the second weekend of this month I’ve worked, which is lousy, but I really want to finish so I can, er, you know, write another novella and a book proposal by the end of April.
Totally normal goals, guys. Totally normal.