Ah, Wednesday. So busy.
We were intending to start edits yesterday but it didn’t work out; this is such a busy month in publishing! My heart goes out to all the editors, agents, and authors who are scrambling to get everything to press on time. We did dive in today though, and it was a great experience.
My emotional state in regards to the contest is constantly in flux, though always on an upswing. Sometimes I’m going along just dandy and then someone says something or does something that makes me stop and think and realize what a complete honor this really is. And then I go back and look over the pages that I submitted last spring and wonder why in the world they picked me, and feel so utterly indebted and so pathetically shocked that I stare at my keyboard, frantic because I can’t possibly live up to all of the expectations.
Getting line edits from David is one such experience; knowing that he not only took the time to give my novel multiple reads, but is now taking the time to go through and tell me exactly what needs to be worked on, and why, exactly, each change needs to be made, is enough to make me both giddy and frantic for quite a while. We went over the first three chapters this morning and then I edited through the afternoon, and, when I finished, I reworked a short story that I wrote yesterday.
Most of the changes made on the novel were pretty basic–cutting and reworking scenes and tinkering with dialog and descriptions. I have a feeling that once we get into the heart of the plot, though, there will be a lot more overhauling to be done. I have to say that I’m looking forward to it. It was awesome to get critiques on issues that I hadn’t even considered before, and to hear the logic behind fixing scenes that I knew needed work, but was too close to to be able to say why.
Tomorrow is moving day! You can only stay in hostels for fourteen days so I have to move out of this one after tonight. After much deliberation, I decided to get some of my stuff over to the new place today so that I wouldn’t have to stress about it tomorrow, so I went after work to scout it out and ask whether that would be okay and then came back and picked up my big duffel bag. I considered taking the subway but once I realized that I couldn’t lift the thing higher than six inches for any extended period of time, I caved and hailed a cab. That’s what I get for trying to live out of one bag for four weeks I guess. But it wasn’t that expensive so I shouldn’t complain.
I also have a whole stack of postcards that I need to send out. On my to-do list for tomorrow, hopefully. Also on my to-do list? My brother and I decided last night/this morning to write a book together over the summer. Considering our sense of humor, you should probably be very, very afraid. I, on the other hand, am only very, very excited. We talked about it for three hours last night and decided that it should involve Wisconsin, nanomachines, titanium fangs, and possibly the letter Ø.
