A friend emailed the other day asking if I'm still alive. Yes, I've survived the holidays. I'm sorry if I've worried anyone. It was a busy holiday season, full of fun, illness, and revision.
You see I mentioned fun first in my list, right? I'm not just saying that to psyche myself up. Although, at first it felt like one of those inspirational mantras or something to yell at the top of your lungs so your head doesn't explode from stress, "SERENITY, NOW!"
"Fake it until you make it." Or in my case, until it becomes reality.
The holidays were awesome. I had a lot of time off to spend with my family. The only bad part was that most of my loved ones were sick. And not with the same illness. That would make it too easy.
My son had the stomach flu (we figured out he was sick after he vomited as he ran to the bathroom, slipped, and fell in his own puke), my sis-in-law had bronchitis, father-in-law a sinus infection, and my nephew came down with pink-eye (at least he waited until after Santa dropped by with gifts).
For those of us not suffering any illness, we were extremely grateful and enjoyed not being sick even though a lot of our time involved nursing the sick ones. Everyone is now healthy. YAY!
I received a revision request a week before Christmas. Talk about "say what?"
Yeah, it took me two days of nail biting and pacing to figure out how I'd pull it off. It involved cutting 30k from my manuscript, rearranging chapters, adding a new point-of-view character, adding 30k back into the manuscript, and spicing it up (I'm talking sex, only so far I haven't written a sex scene. I'm thinking it's too early in their relationship. However, they've come damn close).
I have a hundred pages left in to revise, so the sex question isn't off the table, err bed, yet. I hope to have the draft finished and off to my critique partners by the end of the month, if not sooner.
So, how were your holidays. Fun times?
Glad to hear you are still alive. :D Back to work!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the virtual whip-crack. I'm a chapter away from finishing the revised rough. So close, I can taste it. Gives me the shivers!
DeleteWelcome back! Sorry to hear you've all been so unwell, but glad to hear everyone has recovered now! Your Christmas sounds a lot like mine - super busy. I had two weeks off from the day job but they just flew by. I can't believe it's mid-January already. I'm still working on my NaNoWriMo novel (only 10,000 words to go!) as I didn't get much done on that in December. Once that's done, it's back to revisions on my previous WIP. Good luck with finishing your revisions!
ReplyDeleteYay! Have you noticed it's when its "only 10k" left that it's the hardest to finish? I tend to slow down once I know I'm almost done. I start to wonder whether the end is how I want it or whether I should do something else. I procrastinate finishing. Or in my case over the weekend, I wrote two chapters and decided they weren't good enough. 6k and a full day of writing that I'm throwing away, because I know it can be better, lol.
DeleteGood luck! Stay strong and may the muse be with you.
I'm glad everyone's feeling healthier now.
ReplyDeleteAnd my sympathies about the revisions! That sounds like so much work!