Paksworld

Today has been not-quite-typical but sufficiently full of writing stuff that you might find it interesting.   Though it started not with writing stuff but with the car making odd noises the last time I had it out.

So yesterday, Himself called the car repair place, described the noises and made an appointment to take it in.   (It was going BRRRAPPP! when the automatic door lock engaged, and a sound I can’t even begin to put into letters when I put on the brakes.)     As usual, I woke up first, started up my computer about 7:15, and after about half an hour  of work  looked at the clock and decided Himself should get up in order to get to the car dealership (in another town, of course) on time.

After he left I settled into serious work on the revisions of Crisis of Vision Editor had sent.   These are always more complicated than they look, because just deleting something or adding something isn’t enough–the gap or the bulge must be feathered in to the rest of the story so that you, the readers, never know it happened.    And I was behind where I wanted to be, having lost ground last week when the virus had infiltrated my brain and filled it with unthinking glue.   Most of it has now drained out.    I was working away on that when the phone rang.

My good friend and alpha reader E- was having email trouble but wanted me to know that she’d gotten an email from Amazon (because she orders my books from there) with what looked like a real mess about the new one….something advertising it as part of “Playaway Adult Fiction” for $89.99.   E- freaked.  I freaked.   Emails raced up to Editor, who checked with their sub-rights people.  We had actually licensed the audio rights with one  company and they, it turned out, had sub-licensed this particular format to this other company.  The things you don’t know.    I wonder what my cut of that price is.   I wonder who’s foolish enough to pay it.   More things you don’t know.

Once we had this straightened out,  I went back to the revision work, but also had an email in to my web guru to see if she could find some stuff scanned several years ago.   When I was about three, my mother wrote me an etiquette book…it may or may not have had the desired effect on my behavior, but it immediately impressed me with the possibility of real people writing books.  And since Editor had asked me yesterday if I could come up with “books that inspired you” I thought “Sure, and it would be cute to have the pictures from that book.”  Editor thought so too.

The pictures arrived.  I spent some time looking at them and choosing three to send to Editor, then re-titling them for that purpose.  Back to revisions.    At some point Himself came home with the car (no longer making funny noises), some groceries, and two big fat burritos from Freebird’s.    We took them out to the back yard, since it was springlike (minus any green.)    I threw some birdseed around.   I ate half a burrito, came back inside to go back to work  and slowly folded into an inert mass (still having energy drags from the virus of last week.)

Slept for an hour or two (not even sure.)  Crawled up from the depths of sleep, started working on revisions again.    Did not at first notice another email from Editor…did I by chance have any previous speech or essay on autism to add to the news letter for March, because they’re reissuing The Speed of Dark???   By then it was after five pm here, let alone in NYC.

I ate a couple of bollitos from a sack of them Himself brought home from the grocery.   Watched some of NCIS, interspersed with staring at someone else’s book and wondering why mine is so much worse.  (Tangled revisions do this to me.)    Then back to the revisions.

The revisions had my brain tied in a knot again by 9:30 pm, so I switched to the new book and wrote just over 1000 words on that, popping it over the top of the 60,000 word mark, and then went then back to revisions.   It’s now almost 11:30 pm, and I should come up with something for the March newsletter and plow through at least another 50 pages of revisions.    Because tomorrow is Wednesday and I really, REALLY need to get to choir practice.  Missed last week, missed Sunday services.  The big 5 hour rehearsal for the St. John Passion is this coming Saturday.

But…progress.   Book IV over 60,000 words.    Revisions coming along.   More days like this and everything will get done.