Prepping for launch day…
C.E. Grundler
A few seasons back I recall a fellow with a rather pretty old wooden boat, up on the hard not far from us. He had recently purchased this lovely classic looking vessel, and he took great pride in it. And while we worked away on one dirty, unglamorous project or another, there he was, readying for the upcoming summer, freshening paint and brightwork, polishing every inch of brass until that little boat sparkled. Still, I couldn't help but recall how, when he hauled out the previous fall, he'd mentioned a myriad of issues, both with mechanical systems and loose seams below the waterline – issues I never saw him address as launch day approached. And one warm spring morning, in the boat went – and not long after began to take on vast volumes of water. It was just as quickly hauled out, and then remained back beside us for the next two months as he made the necessary repairs.
Meanwhile, the brightwork aboard my own boat remains a matter of great embarrassment to me. I actually enjoy the rituals of varnish upkeep, and my last boat was a fine example of what ten coats of Epifanes over every inch of exposed wood can look like. However, I can't see the point of tackling the brightwork until the more critical issues are wrapped up. And I suppose that philosophy spills over to my writing as well.
After another intensive week of revisions, No Wake Zone went back into my editor's hands. We're coming down to the end, all the major revisions had been hammered out, and this was the point where I'd gone through the entire book yet again, sentence by sentence, tweaking dialog and refining descriptions, inspecting how the words flowed, hunting down extraneous adjectives, and giving everything that final polish. My hope is that we've caught all the issues, that all the mechanical workings operate as they should, that the plot is sound, with no holes or leaks. This is the scary, thrilling part. The last boat has held up well and is floating along nicely, and the brightwork has a decent shine. The question is, once I launch it, how will my new addition to the fleet compare?
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