Camp NaNoWriMo (or as I like to shorten it, Camp NaNo) is in two days, and I ain’t ready, not by a half mile, I ain’t. I’m also awake too early. You’d think those two sentences would mean I could get my Camp bus in gear and set off. Nope. Instead I’m punchy from lack of sleep.
Monday, I finished my third NaNoWriMo novel Time and Space. I did those final find-and-replace kind of edits, the ones where I blithely hit “Replace All” and then wonder what I’m replacing, if the software will make some sentences look strange or have the grammar police, with me leading, charging after it screaming, you screwed up, there’s an extra period at the end of that sentence! Well, that’s what editors are for, I soothed myself while I went on to my next Find-and-what-the-heck-Replace-All edit.
Monday, I spoke to my editor and discovered, holy cow, my brain injury book will be started on next week! And here I was moseying along, not chivvying my feedback person to get the rest of the feedback to me. I had already made a change here and there since sending my manuscript off to Iguana Books, and I was planning on incorporating the feedback I’d received a couple of weeks ago, planning being the operative word. So tout de suite to the computer I went before the humid heat descended and rendered me heat-comatose on the couch!
I rewrote the opening and chucked out lots of good stuff. Maybe I’ll slot bits and pieces back in in other places. Maybe not. The hardest part of writing — or sometimes when in a mad frenzy of rewriting under deadline, the easiest — is cutting things out. I don’t usually have to do that because my first drafts are always too short. Time and Space after two revisions, is finally over 80,000 words. But Concussion IS Brain Injury was over 100,000 in its very first incarnation. I created it from my over-60 blog posts on the topic. I’m a bit wordy when it comes to brain injury, or maybe not wordy, but I do have a lot to say.
At the same time as I was incorporating feedback, I was getting some blog posts out of my head and into the computer so that I could add them to my brain injury manuscript. I got one written and published. And then the muggy heat wave hit. And my body decided enough with writing or doing much of anything. Thankfully, it’s cooling down today. The birds are happy; the raccoons are banging up a celebration; and I’m blogging.
