you're under the gun so you take it on the run

I absolutely can't think anymore. I was at the office by seven a.m., and I've basically been "on" ever since then, with a short break around 8pm to talk to my parents, Katrina, and eat some takeout sushi while watching Craig Ferguson interview Simon Cowell. That break was vital; I was trying to switch from active-editing mode to proofreading mode, and I needed a little bit of downtime between those two activities. Luckily, the Craig episode I watched was awesome; the intro was him and two other dudes lipsyncing a rap song with puppet backup vocalists, and his conversation with Simon Cowell was totally hysterical.

So why did I work so long and so hard? The first five hours was for the day job; I lead a meeting, had a 1:1 with my director, and took care of a whole bunch of other stuff. Then, I met up with Adit, and we worked in a cafe for five hours. I was quite productive there -- and I had to be, because I'm under the gun with zee romance novel. I found out yesterday afternoon that one of the final-round judges for the contest I'm in wants to see the whole manuscript (excellent sign), and as a courtesy, they give me 48 hours to submit a new version if I've made any changes since the original entry deadline last December.

Now, as you know, I've been in editing mode recently -- and so while I'm totally excited about the request, I wish it was coming a week later. C'est la vie, though, and I didn't want to blow it; so, I took the rest of the day off and spent it plowing through the planned revisions. There were only two things I didn't get to, and in retrospect I don't know that they're all that necessary; I do want to include more of Amelia's writing life in the book, but I think it can probably be snippets here and there rather than a fully new scene. But, it's not going to make it into the version I'm sending to the editor; I actually emailed it back to the contest coordinator ten minutes ago, because I'm as done as I'm going to get and can't spend any more time on it tomorrow.

So, fingers crossed that this will turn into good news! But right now I'm too tired to dream of my castles in the sky; it's time for bed!