Janice MacDonald's Blog: Notes on writing - Posts Tagged "spring-2013-release"
The Calm Before the Storm
I have one weekend to go. I intend to get in the car with my husband, drive out of town to our friends' house for a relaxing evening of good food, wine and board games. We may play a bit of music together. I know we'll laugh a lot. And I will enjoy every minute. And boy, will I need it.
Because next week, I am getting my manuscript back from my editor. It will be accompanied by about 24 pages of close, single-spaced notes. They will be prefaced with a paragraph telling me how much she enjoyed the story. Because she is a very nice person, she has in fact already written me two short emails to that effect.
It's what comes after that paragraph that will take a whole lot of energy to get through, and then a whole lot of work to deal with. Because it is never much fun dealing with critiques of your work — even critiques meant to make your work the best it can be. I am and have always been a carrot responder. Sticks hurt my feelings and leave me feeling completely deflated.
However, I will read through all of her notes, and I will set my alarm to ungodly-thirty A.M. each Friday night, and I will resign my weekends for the foreseeable future to rewrites and nail-biting and swearing under my breath. I will work my way through all 24 pages, shifting and changing the words I sweated over, moving situations and plot lines about and even cutting the occasional beloved character. I will also craft tortured paragraphs of justification for every phrase I cannot bear to lose, worrying that it won't be enough of an argument to sway my editor, who will have grown to resemble Grendel's mother in my mind's eye (she's actually a very attractive young woman with shiny hair and great shoulders).
The book, which my publisher paid me an advance on, and liked so much that he entrusted it to a gifted, qualified, expensive editor, will at various points in these next few weeks seem like both the best thing I have ever written and the worst pile of verbiage anyone scraped off their shoe. I will wonder why it is I ever thought I could write. I will cry a bit and be an enormous irritant to my husband. I will be distracted while commuting. I may burn dinner.
I will also dance about a bit when I laugh anew at the funny bits I cannot wait for people to read, I'll thrill to the exciting bits that pop, and I will thank my editor for making the suggestions I needed to tighten, to tauten, to clear away the dross. (What little there was, of course.)
And I will be so happy when spring arrives and the books come off the press and I hold one in my hand and whisper, "Thank you, Sharon."
Because next week, I am getting my manuscript back from my editor. It will be accompanied by about 24 pages of close, single-spaced notes. They will be prefaced with a paragraph telling me how much she enjoyed the story. Because she is a very nice person, she has in fact already written me two short emails to that effect.
It's what comes after that paragraph that will take a whole lot of energy to get through, and then a whole lot of work to deal with. Because it is never much fun dealing with critiques of your work — even critiques meant to make your work the best it can be. I am and have always been a carrot responder. Sticks hurt my feelings and leave me feeling completely deflated.
However, I will read through all of her notes, and I will set my alarm to ungodly-thirty A.M. each Friday night, and I will resign my weekends for the foreseeable future to rewrites and nail-biting and swearing under my breath. I will work my way through all 24 pages, shifting and changing the words I sweated over, moving situations and plot lines about and even cutting the occasional beloved character. I will also craft tortured paragraphs of justification for every phrase I cannot bear to lose, worrying that it won't be enough of an argument to sway my editor, who will have grown to resemble Grendel's mother in my mind's eye (she's actually a very attractive young woman with shiny hair and great shoulders).
The book, which my publisher paid me an advance on, and liked so much that he entrusted it to a gifted, qualified, expensive editor, will at various points in these next few weeks seem like both the best thing I have ever written and the worst pile of verbiage anyone scraped off their shoe. I will wonder why it is I ever thought I could write. I will cry a bit and be an enormous irritant to my husband. I will be distracted while commuting. I may burn dinner.
I will also dance about a bit when I laugh anew at the funny bits I cannot wait for people to read, I'll thrill to the exciting bits that pop, and I will thank my editor for making the suggestions I needed to tighten, to tauten, to clear away the dross. (What little there was, of course.)
And I will be so happy when spring arrives and the books come off the press and I hold one in my hand and whisper, "Thank you, Sharon."
Notes on writing
Watch this space for notes from author Janice MacDonald — on the road, dashing off to another appearance, or working her way through the writing of the next Randy Craig Mystery.
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