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Leaving home
The completed manuscript for THE FIRST BETRAYAL should arrive at Bantam today, a mere 8 days behind schedule :-)
Like a parent with a child leaving home for the first time, it's a mix of pride and anxiety, wondering if this child is ready to face the world.
Busy couple of days coming up, as I sort through the gear for the bike trip, and try to decide what I need and what I can do without. Also need to go through my TBR stack to decide which books will come with me.
Reading: Finished CURSE THE DARK by Laura Anne Gilman, the second book in her Retrievers series. Much of the book takes places during a heat wave in New York, which gave it a certain resonance during the record heat.
Like a parent with a child leaving home for the first time, it's a mix of pride and anxiety, wondering if this child is ready to face the world.
Busy couple of days coming up, as I sort through the gear for the bike trip, and try to decide what I need and what I can do without. Also need to go through my TBR stack to decide which books will come with me.
Reading: Finished CURSE THE DARK by Laura Anne Gilman, the second book in her Retrievers series. Much of the book takes places during a heat wave in New York, which gave it a certain resonance during the record heat.
Re: Probably more than you want to know...
Having a day job means there are indeed time crunches when I don't have a social life. I don't get to see movies, I feel guilty going out to dinner with friends when I should be writing, or I emerge from the book haze to find out that everyone is raving about a new TV show that I've totally missed (I'm thinking of BSG here).
Fitting things in involves juggling priorities. I find deadlines keep me incented-- if I have no definite deadline then it's easy to make excuses why I'm doing something other than working on the book. But if I know that I have a hard deadline to turn around revisions, then I know what I'm doing with my 'free' time between now and then.
There's also a ruthless practicality that comes from working on a deadline. If you only have two months for revisions, you have to do triage, to fix the parts that can be fixed, making sure that the important changes get made. You're not going to get the chance to rewrite each scene five or six times until you're satisfied. You need to learn how to say "This is the best I can make this at this time" and then move on.
Of course if the book needs major rework, chances are your editor will understand and give you more time. I'd actually prefer having two months to do revisions than six months-- two months keeps me focused while six months gives me way too much time for second guessing myself.
Copyedits are mostly a chance to make sure that the copyeditor hasn't done anything horrific, and that all the important goofs have been caught. Things as small as a signet ring changing color between scenes, or the time when I had the never-ending month that must have been at least ten weeks long based on everything that took place during it. Depending on how light the copyedits are, I can check these over and respond over the course of a couple of nights.
By the galley stage, I've read my book so often that my eyes glaze over. To keep me focused, I use a trick I learned in college-- I start with the last page of the book and read my way from back to front. That keeps me from getting lost in the story and missing the details. Reading galleys takes longer than reading the same length book for pleasure, but can be done in a single night if need be.
Hope this was helpful.
Re: Probably more than you want to know...
Re: Probably more than you want to know...
Re: Probably more than you want to know...
What cons are on your schedule for this year?
Re: Probably more than you want to know...
Re: Probably more than you want to know...
Re: Probably more than you want to know...
Shannon