Just sent the revisions on Tracker in…

People don’t realize how much Jane is involved in the writing of these books. In this case she dropped her own writing, parked herself in a chair, and 48 hours later, including taking the book to bed, she handed me a brilliantly-done critique, with line notes and suggestions…now and again I like her wording better than mine. So when I dedicate a book to Jane it’s often because she’s got paragraphs in it.

I handed her a new version 24 hours later, and 24 hours after that she handed me another compare file WITH a copy of the original with the suggestions already embedded, which took some mental algebra to get properly compared with MY original text…and 24 hours after that—I have produced a final from the combination of her notes and that text. NOW she’s in there trying to clean up the kitchen disaster area after my marathon re-editing which started early this morning. We’re having pizza tonight and starting another stew pot tomorrow if I don’t intervene with my brilliant notion of crescent-roll-based pastry shells for a chicken pot pie. We’ll see what I feel like doing. I might get inventive.

But bless her, I’ll have a clean kitchen to do it. I hear the bangs and thumps. And all this while Jane is working on her own story.

Did I mention I just fired the finalfinal back to her because she said she wants to read it. And I realize now that I’ve sent it to NYC that I haven’t run the check for certain words I wanted to run before I sent it—sometimes our modern age just moves too fast for its own good… SO there may yet be a finalfinalfinal before Betsy gets to edit it.

I’m now happy with it, however. We get inventive on file names: trackerv1jsf, trackercjc, trackercjccomp, tracker2jsf, tracker2cjc, trackercompnov3, trackerfinalcjc, trackerfinaljsc, trackerfinalfinalnov5…

And this isn’t saying there won’t be more. This is the only mode in which I really appreciate Windows over DOS—when I can call up two files side by side, and run the red-letter version of the edit past the original in the same screen.

Thank goodness also for hyperclean focus on the glasses. I have one pair set so I can read 8pt type. And that really matters when I’m trying to get 2 whole pages on at once. Since I work only with a laptop in an undersized armchair, occasionally with kitty help, this miniaturization helps.

I’m now started on the next book, the title of which I know but have not yet announced (no, I won’t, not yet!), and Jane’s going to follow up on that one, too, so we can make sure the data matches from book to book.