The goal, of course, is to get the entire type-in on NIGHT ECHOES done today (especially since, in a perfect world, it would have been typed in and overnighted to my editor yesterday, and this morning it is neither), and in time to get to the post office with room to spare to overnight the thing to my editor to have on her desk tomorrow. This may not happen, but I’m going to give it my best shot.
There’s a significant amount of type-in to do, including the writing of one … two new scenes, and the significant revision of a third.
For fun, I’m putting up a progress bar just for the type-in. If you’re interested in how it’s going, you can peek in from time to time and see. I’ll keep it updated; I’m sitting right at the computer for this part, after all.
Wish me luck.
Spent the weekend figuring out ways to insert a couple of necessary scenes in NIGHT ECHOES, and ways to replace the couple I have to pull out. It has not been simple, because the replacements are critical red herrings, and upon the grace with which they can be substituted rests the success of the novel. Today, though, I should start seeing some actual page progress.
This particular revision, though it is not massive in scale, is pretty perplexing in scope.
And I have to have it to my editor on the 14th, or as close to that as possible.
So I get my revision notes from my editor for NIGHT ECHOES, along with the timeframe for getting it back to her. Oct. 1 is the date she writes, and I think, Great! Excellent. Enough time to do the final revision of HAWKSPAR, then do the final revision of NIGHT ECHOES, and still breathe.
I tell my editor she’ll have the ms. by Oct. 1.
She writes back. No, Oct. 1 is her last deadline. My last deadline is going to be sooner than that. Probably significantly sooner than that.
Long, painful silence ensues as I digest this news.
HAWKSPAR comes next. My editor for that book has been more than understanding, I have stretched the project out because of the “I’ll need NIGHT ECHOES next month, not the same month next year” deadline, and now, having half-killed myself to get it done in that time, I may not make the cutoff anyway. Because I’m not starting NIGHT ECHOES until I finish HAWKSPAR.
You should be able to hear the dull thudding of my head against my desk, no matter where you are. You’ll see me again. Not necessarily soon, though.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d changed, or how much typing would be involved. So I contacted my editor, who’d been expecting the file in her e-mail yesterday, only to find that her return from vacation had involved much more stuff than she’d anticipated. So here we are, me still typing in, her doing all the stuff that landed on her desk while she was away. I should have most of this to her by tomorrow, and the whole shebang by the end of the week.
Still don’t like my ending. Am hoping inspiration will strike between now and Monday.
When I get this done, I have to tell you about the deep worldbuilding for Project Blue. It involves quantum entanglement, God immanent, and talking socks. The pair shown are Abundance Socks. They’re based on the magic system the protagonists in my new world use. The Abundance Socks are only talking to spirit—some of the later pairs, deeply subversive, will be talking to other people.
NIGHT ECHOES is just about finished. I have most of the write-in edit done. Yeah, it took longer than I planned, but my editor had already told me she wouldn’t be able to get to it until the 21st, so this might be a case of work expanding to fill the space available. The first draft was in pretty good shape, though lacking in places in necessary deception. In the rewrite, I’ve been working in all those red herrings and sleight-of-hand tricks that tend to make writers look clever, when in fact they are nothing more than thinking of the perfect thing to say fifteen minutes too late … and then being able to rewind the clock and say them.
This is why I’m a writer rather than someone who does things live. I am the goddess of Perfect Riposte Half Hour After.
I’ve been dreaming THE RUBY KEY. I’ve been dreaming moonroads, and what’s at the other end of them. Sometimes it’s so cool, I don’t want to wake up.
