Well, I finally finished the first draft of my second book, Roses Are Dead, My Love. This was exactly one year later than I had planned, but life is pretty tricky, isn’t it?
I was totally sidetracked by an on-going family emergency that began last May. The summer was exhausting, a slight reprieve in the fall, and then of course, the dreaded holidays were upon us. During this time writing took a back seat. In fact it was pretty much relegated to the trunk, if not actually being pulled along in a little U-Haul trailer.
Just as I was getting back into a fairly organized writing routine, life once again got in the way. This time, happily, it wasn’t a bad thing. My first book, Roses and Daisies and Death, Oh My!, was picked up by Intrigue Publishing. Of course, this meant polishing and editing and re-editing and proofing and reading it out loud and finding incredibly dumb sounding sentences, sort of like this one, that have no end in sight and need to be fixed, but the manuscript is already in and now I’m waiting for the galley proof.
Being brand new to publishing, I’m not entirely sure what a galley proof is. But I believe from comments a friend has made, that it is the very last editable copy of the book before it’s a done deal.
So I am now pondering what to do. Do I read the entire manuscript of Roses and Daisies out loud to myself or to some poor sucker who’ll sit still for it and look for needed changes? And will I ever be satisfied anyway and would this be a gigantic waste of time?
Do I begin edits on Roses Are Dead? This could be fun, but should I wait and let it all gel a bit before I begin?
And I have a third book in mind. Rose and Daisy meet a ghost. I know this will take a couple of weeks, maybe months, of mulling over to come up with the complete plot. I mean, I guess they could just shake hands with the thing and get on with life, but that would be a really short book. So maybe I should start outlining and see where it takes the charming ladies.
Of course, there are things that I actually am supposed to be doing. I have a book reading next week and I should be reading out loud from my manuscript, so I don’t sound like a total idiot. But that is where I started to panic (see paragraph 4) about the run-on sentences and the fact that I have neglected to use any pronouns at all in the chapter I’ve chosen to read. It’s reminiscent of that Kathy Lee Gifford Christmas special where she kept introducing her husband as ‘Frank Gifford’ every time he stepped on stage, as if she might forget his name if she didn’t keep repeating it. (Aside: I have never watched a Kathy Lee Gifford special. I read about this curious incident in a column by Lisa Morales in the Washington Post. It was a hoot.)
In addition, I’ve got a beautiful quilt panel my sister-in-law made for me to hang in the kitchen. I have yet to hang it. I have an old kitchen chair I’ve been meaning to repaint. I have yet to repaint it. And I’ve got a little patch of garden that is overrun with weeds which just gets me down when I look at it.
To top it all off my husband is laying a new floor on the deck and I’m his day laborer. I was just lifting a 12 foot 2×4 – or at least one end of it. I tell you those seven pound dumbbells I’ve been using are really paying off!
So I’ve got all this to do and what am I doing? Sipping tea and writing this blog, of course. What else would I be doing?
PS: If you happen to like my blog could you possibly click the G+1 icon and/or share it on Facebook? Apparently, this will do great things for my readership!
Don’t bet on it … the FB thing I mean. It’s gotten to the point I G+1 myself and Like myself and Share myself, and then when I see myself on FB, I ignore myself.
So .. the galley. I’m going through mine now. It reads different in book form, so much so, I had to check with Intrigue to be sure I could make the changes I was making, which amounted to way more than puncuation and format. Ie: all of the first lines of a chapter are indented, and not as I had them in the manuscipt, and I’m doing other stuff too.
They told me this was what I was supposed to do. They might change their minds when they see all the changes I’ve made. It’s like writing a book!
So, Penny, to get away from all this for a while, I suggest gardening.
And I practiced reading out loud to my dogs. They wouldn’t stop laughing.
C Ya!