I should be happy with the progress that I made on the book today, but I'm having one of those "I need to accomplish everything RIGHT NOW" moments that is making it hard for me to do the whole "celebrate small successes" thing that all the self-help gurus recommend. I basically worked on the book all day, with some procrastinatory breaks -- and the breaks weren't totally useless, considering that I did two loads of laundry, talked briefly to my parents (who weren't able to talk for long because some of my mother's cousins were staying with them tonight), and ran errands to the mailbox, the ATM, and Walgreens.
One of the requirements for the current phase of editing is to finally answer the little research questions that I hadn't gotten around to (like, was the Grecian style on the way out by 1811 -- yes; would the Scots Highlanders say "ain't?" -- yes, but I decided to sprinkle in some "amn't" instead; is Scotch considered "whisky" or "whiskey"? -- whisky). And since I love history, the research phase is dangerous, and led me down some treacherous tangents, although I did manage to put down my copious book on 19th century British fashion as soon as I answered the Grecian question, rather than losing myself for hours in descriptions of spencers, pelisses, tippets, reticules, etc. If you don't know what those things are, rejoice in the fact that you have likely spent your life learning more useful things.
So by the end of today, I answered a lot of little questions and finally entered all of the line edits I did on my paper copy into my electronic copy. I also finally edited the last sixty pages of the manuscript and put that into the computer as well, so my computerized copy is as clean as it's likely to get. I took care of some annoying formatting issues, like the fact that half the manuscript had smart quotes and half didn't, and laughed at the sheer stupidity of most of Word's grammar suggestions.
The only real things left to do are to go back and add in some more of Malcolm's perspective -- as I believe I mentioned before, my understanding of the reason why he didn't want to get married kept changing, and so his train of thought through the book is a little muddy. I also need to add a scene or two towards the end to show more of their falling-in-love stage, but that should be fun to write. Then I need to write a clean, tight synopsis of the story, craft the perfect query letter, and start looking for an agent.
All of this could theoretically be done in the next couple of weeks, but I think I'm cranky because seeking publication is such a risk, with such a high possibility of rejection, and I'm definitely stepping out of my comfort zone by pursuing something that I'm not completely convinced I can succeed at. Don't get me wrong, I love my manuscript and think I have something great, but if any of the little pieces aren't exactly right on (such as the all-important query letter, or the energy of the first three chapters), potential agents will reject me out of hand. And I *hate* rejection -- so this will probably be a good learning experience for me. If I'm going to go down the rejection path, I might as well start as quickly as possible, so that means buckling down and finishing the final draft regardless of how much I want to procrastinate.
I should go to bed; I didn't do any work work this weekend, and since I was behind on emails when I left Friday, tomorrow should be busy. It's compounded by an all-afternoon offsite, followed by a management team dinner, followed by a separate all-day offsite on Tuesday, as well as an unrelated training that I have to attend on Thursday. How I'm supposed to do my real job when I'm sitting in meetings all day is a question that I have never satisfactorily answered. But, one of the ways in which I procrastinated today was to block off one Friday each month through next August so that I can start having regular writing-focused three-day weekends. I also blocked off a week for Aunt Becky's wedding to the scandalous fiance and a week for the Romance Writers of America convention in D.C. -- and since I'm now so tenured and already have vacation stored up, even that excessive amount of vacation leaves me with four unused vacation weeks that I can spend sometime next year. Ha. Goodnight!
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