So, I ship the combed, braided, polished manuscript back to my editor,\u00a0 and after a few hours to breathe deeply, look at flowers, avoid rattlesnakes (unlike yesterday)\u00a0 I open the book I was working on before the editor’s comments came.<\/p>\n
“Hi,” I said to it, as I came in.\u00a0\u00a0 “I’m back!\u00a0 Ready to go?”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Silence.\u00a0\u00a0 This is the thing about books in progress.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mine at least.\u00a0 They hate <\/em>being\u00a0 interrupted.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I apologized.\u00a0 I reminded the story that it had been warned I needed to leave for awhile, and that I was now back, as promised.<\/p>\n Silence.\u00a0\u00a0 The book did not even deign to answer me, or look at me.\u00a0 It stared out the window.\u00a0\u00a0 “Come on now,” I coaxed, flipping through its files.\u00a0 “Here’s a nice place to start in again–”\u00a0\u00a0 It turned away even more.\u00a0 It was not mollified.\u00a0\u00a0 It was not resigned.\u00a0 It was furious at what it perceived as abandonment.\u00a0\u00a0 It snarled at me mentally that I had promised<\/em>, after the two novellas last year, that I would not do anything<\/em> else.<\/p>\n I argued that doing revisions on its first part was not the same thing as going off and writing space opera.\u00a0 It sniffed.\u00a0\u00a0 A book in first draft regards revision as something that happens someday, a long way away, to someone else.\u00a0\u00a0 It reminded me that I’m leaving for six days and just exactly how much writing will I do during that time?\u00a0\u00a0 “None, if you don’t straighten up,” I said, unwisely.\u00a0\u00a0 One coaxes books out of their sulks–threatening them doesn’t work (well, not unless the deadline is approaching at the speed of light.)<\/p>\n So there is Book, attempting to claim that it doesn’t want to be written (by YOU<\/em>, it mutters),\u00a0\u00a0 and here am I, wanting to do some writing that isn’t the hideously nitpicky word-by-word snipping I’ve been doing.\u00a0\u00a0 Luckily, I know from several decades of this stuff that Book will come around.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We’re too far into this project for Book to quit on me…but it wants to be sure I understand its position.\u00a0 (I do, already: just come on and let’s get going.\u00a0 We’ll all be happier after a good thousand-word-plus gallop.)<\/p>\n Book and I will have to have a mind-body experience tonight–I will have to sit here until Book deigns to let me write it, which means the body will be stiff and tired, but the mind will suddenly connect with Book.\u00a0\u00a0 And I had better take the laptop (or a big fat notebook)\u00a0 on the train with me.<\/p>\n [Edited 4\/28, because I got home and found, of all things, an apostrophe error!\u00a0\u00a0 ICK!\u00a0 Bad writer: no cookie!]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So, I ship the combed, braided, polished manuscript back to my editor,\u00a0 and after a few hours to breathe deeply, look at flowers, avoid rattlesnakes (unlike yesterday)\u00a0 I open the book I was working on before the editor’s comments came. “Hi,” I said to it, as I came in.\u00a0\u00a0 “I’m back!\u00a0 Ready to go?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}