Upsizing and Downgrading--or Why The Holidays Suck

Wow, have I been busy. Not only have I been too busy to blog, but I juswt checked my email accounts and had ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO new emails.

Of which 90 were spam.

So, I've been getting the antique shop through the holidays (traffic is up, business is down--go figure), rapping out a mess of rewrites, bartending for special holiday parties *rolls eyes* and doing sporadic Christmas shopping (I'm still planning my annual December 23 2 a.m. trip to get it all done) and...not content with my normal chaos...have decided to upgrade and move to a bigger house.

Yeah, I know. The last chick is flown from the nest and now I want a bigger house? Go figure. So in the midst of holiday madness and still under a work restriction from my latest back fiasco (did NOT go well, but thanks for asking!) I am now packing up my house.

What an idiot.

So anyway, here's what I figure: if I can make it past January 7th (Ohio State in the national championship game playing against LSU in what is essentially a home game for the SEC champ---have to love the 'fairness' of a system like the BCS) then I can get back some semblance of my normal compartmentalized life. Won't that be nice?

AND DIFFERENT?

*thinks for a minute*

Yeah. I agree. Bah humbug.

Getting Ready

I'm still learning so much. I'm trying to get all of my techno geek stuff out of the way before NaNoWriMo. One of those things is the Technorati Profile
Technorati link that I'm posting. I want to see if this actually works. I think I have lots of interesting things to say, despite the carnie derailments of last month.

My writing cave is ready to go: fully stocked with all of the implements I need to win the Great Tea Debacle. Don't forget to check out the other participants' (subtext--losers') blogs if you want to keep up with progress.

*starts the Celina Wins gregorian chant mantra in the background*

Tonight will be yet another all nighter I fear. I have less than 24 hours to complete my rewrites and get them in. Should be interesting. Bring on the coffee! I have no fear!

Yep...those are my guts up on the table

Gee whiz. This whole review process is nerve-wracking. It's entirely too stressful to think that out there somewhere in the cyberworld, people are reading The Reckoning of Asphodel and judging it.

How do you judge someone else's work? I can crit with the best of them, leaving the grammar to someone else of course. I can critique storyline, character development, plotting or lack thereof without problem. But am I qualified to judge someone else's work and publish my opinion for anyone to read?

*shudders* Good God, no. I know what I like but I'd be afraid to toss out my tastes and back them up. You have got to respect reviewers. Even if you don't agree with what they say, you have to listen to what they say.

Granted, I've seen some gratuitous novel-shredding reviews in my time. Some reviews have made me blink. Some have made me cringe. My pseudonym received a review that had her throwing things at the wall. But this is different. This story is my baby. This story is the one that stewed for almost two decades. This story is the one that taught me how to be a writer as opposed to a tinkerer.

As far as I can tell, Asphodel is currently in the hands of at least ten review sites. It's garnering favorable reader reviews on Fictionwise, overwhelmingly receiving "great" or "good" ratings. (There's only 1 'ok' rating and no 'poor' ratings.) The final rewrite of Asphodel 2 is almost done and it'll be off to Aspen Mountain so the editor can make all my pretty white pages red with comments inserted.

*bites fingernails*

Wow. I hope I survive.

Make me stop!

Wow. I can see the light reflecting from the floor tiles three back from the end of the tunnel!

If you're not a writer, let me explain. The work is NEVER done. Even after something has been published, I can go back and skim through it and wince. "Gee, maybe I should have reworked that sentence; it's a little awkward." And before I know it, presto! I'm rewriting something that ostensibly is done.

I am soooooooooooooo close to being done with Asphodel. Sooooooooooooooo close to being able to close the book on it (ha ha! made a funny!) and move on to another project. I'm writing the last 15k of the last book. I'm doing the final proofs on book one as it gets ready for publication. I have PRESS KITS for god's sake! BUT I STILL TWEAK THE DARN THING DAILY.

*sigh* Rewriting for me isn't a sit down and bang it out kind of venture. Rewriting for me occurs as follows: I sit down to read my manuscript. If I'm into the story, then obviously there are no mistakes (until the next time I read it.) If something makes my engrossment stumble, there's a problem. I ran the grammar check on Asphodel last night (I hit ignore on it usually. Some of its 'errors' aren't and I will use sentence fragments, damnit!) and the manuscript has a Fleisch-Kincaid grade level of 4.9 and a reading ease level of 80.7. That's pretty good, I think. It means my younger brother might be able to read half of the first page.

So yes...hopefully my editor can pry the manuscript out of my sweaty, desperately clutching hands before I rewrite the whole darn thing. I'm sure she will; she's quite forceful. Make me stop!! I'll be good....I promise.