Ha! I Made My Deadline After All!
Well, I suppose I’m nothing if not amazing under pressure!
After last night’s blog post, I promptly took a nap because I was exhausted (one of the reasons I figured I was not going to make my deadline; that and the expanded story). Then, as many writers do, I woke up at eleven-thirty at night and realized I was wide awake.
Well, since I was awake, I might as well write, I figured. And suddenly the idea came for me of a place to end the story, at least for now. Sure, there’s still a whole book in the thing, but I found a spot that seemed like a good place to cut it for the moment. And lo and behold, I was just starting the big fight at the climax. Maybe there was still time! The story wasn’t due in until the 3oth, and it was the 29th, so why not?
I double-checked the website for the submission guidelines, and just to make things more interesting, I suddenly realized that the pay was in Australian dollars. Oh shit! I said to myself. What time is it in Australia?
I looked it up. By now it was 5:30 pm in Australia (I assume in Sydney) on the 30th of April.
So away I went. And I wrote like a crazy woman, and I did about twice my normal daily word count. I was putting the finishing touches on the formatting as the sun came up and the birds started twittering in the trees. It was 6:30 am Pacific — 11:30 pm in Sydney — when I hit “send” on the submission email.
So I made it. Barely. I can already think of some mistakes I made in the edit, and my partner who does all my editing didn’t even get a chance to look at it . . . but it’s done. And it’s in.
Now I guess we’ll see! If it makes the anthology, great! If not, regardless, I have a book that’s off to a tightly-plotted good start that I believe has some real potential.
Go ahead, laugh at me. I don’t blame you!
Oh yeah: also, I’m a winner at Camp NaNoWriMo. Yay for me!
