Come See About Me

Tuesday morning and all is well in the Lost Apartment, if a little tired/tiring.

Georgia won the national championship last night! I had to go to bed at the start of the fourth quarter, when the score was 13-12 (Alabama had first and goal inside the five, and had to kick a field goal to pull within one) and I thought to myself, Georgia might actually win this–something I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to, quite frankly–Alabama being, well, Alabama–but I can only imagine how wonderful it felt last night for the Dawg fans to finally beat Alabama and win a title–of any kind (and yes, I can completely relate–I still savor memories of LSU’s win over the Tide in 2019 for the first time in eight long years). This is the third time in the last decade an SEC team has won the national title without winning the conference (Alabama has done it twice already); the third straight year a different SEC team has won the national championship (LSU, Alabama, Georgia); and the first time a team from the SEC East has won a national title since 2008 (Florida)–as well as Georgia’s first since 1980 (!). FIVE SEC teams have won national titles since the turn of the century (LSU, Florida, Alabama, Auburn, and now Georgia)–which should definitely bring the SEC haters out of the woodwork for sure.

And for the record, haters, only Alabama has won more national titles this century than LSU.

I was tired last night by the time the game actually started–I had the time wrong, and tuned in at the end of the first quarter, just before Georgia tied it 3-3–because I’d been doing the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon promotional reading with four other writers with new books out this month, which was a lot of fun…but coming as it did after an hour-and-a-half television interview that came on top of rushing home from work to get there in time for the call…yeah, by the time I settled into the easy chair and opened up Hulu I was worn out. I managed to revise/edit a short story yesterday during my lunch break and while the other authors were reading–I am nothing if not a multi-tasker–and also finished another blog post for the Bold Strokes website. I also managed to get most of my email answered yesterday; there’s no telling what’s in there this morning as I haven’t really had the heart to look, to be frank. (I just did–nothing really other than spam, huzzah! At least for now.) It’s also only 41 degrees this morning–small wonder I didn’t want to get out of bed, really–so that means a sweatshirt under my T-shirt for work this morning and a lot of bitterness on my part. But at least I am on vacation starting tomorrow (this would have been my travel day to New York) which means I don’t have to get up tomorrow and I can dive into the final revision of the book. It’s technically due on Saturday and Monday is a holiday, so I’ll be checking with them to make sure it’s okay if I send it in on Monday (probably really late that night), but I am assuming it will be since most publishers don’t work on weekends or holidays).

Fingers crossed!

I am kind of looking forward to this staycation, despite the enormous disappointment in not going to New York. I have a lot to do–as long as I stay focused–and I am hopeful I will be able to get most of it taken care of since I have been so productive lately. Last night’s interview went well, as did the ZOOM reading, even if that much extroversion exhausted me. I want to get back to reading again–I stalled out on the last book I was reading, and have decided to alas cast it aside and choose another; returning that one to the TBR pile for another shot later…sometimes a book just doesn’t click with me when i try to read it, so I always try to give said book a second chance later. If it doesn’t take on the second try…that’s when it goes into the donate pile. I probably shouldn’t give books a second chance–given the status of the tottering stacks of books in the living room–but there have been any number of books that really grabbed me the second time I tried (The Stand is actually one of these, and there was another one in the pandemic times that I picked up and tried again with the end result that I absolutely LOVED it; I wish I could remember which one it was…) and so I am hesitant to deny myself even the possibility of missing out on a chance to read something fantastic.

But I also need to do something about the books. I also need to stop buying more until and unless I actually get rid of some that I have on hand–or at least until I can clear out some space in the storage attic to move some of these to…but that again shows the hoarder mentality–I will never go digging through boxes in the attic to find a book that’s stored up there; I would just buy another copy. So…maybe just clear them out and if I want to read them at some point in the future just suck it up and buy another copy, or get it from the library?

I don’t know.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and congratulations again, Georgia fans!

Word Up!

So, the staycation is over and it’s back to work for me today. Heavy heaving sigh. I shall miss the halcyon days of getting up when I felt like it, of leisurely spending my morning over coffee as I responded to emails or edited a story or wrote something new, the casual approach I could take to chores and errands. Heavy heaving sigh, indeed.

But at least it’s a short work week–only four days–which makes the adjustment back to not having my own schedule much easier to live with.

I didn’t get as much done on this staycation as I had hoped–when do I ever–but I am pleased with the progress made. I am checking things off on my to-do lists, making new ones, and as always, moving forward even if it appears, at times, to be at a glacial pace. Glacial pace, after all, is better than staying put or sliding backwards. And I am seriously trying to not beat myself up about things as much as I did before. It’s a new me.

We’ll see how long he lasts, shall we? But change doesn’t happen overnight, and I am aware that one doesn’t change a lifetime of self-deprecation overnight. I am determined, however, to break this hideous cycle. ’tis a process, my friends, and one that I fully intend to complete. I doubt very seriously that I will rid myself of all my neuroses, but I suspect I shall come rather close.

One of the things I did yesterday was pull all of the individual chapters of Royal Street Reveillon into one document; part of my new let’s try something new with this manuscript experiment. Usually I write each chapter as a separate file, labeled accordingly: “Chapter 12-2” being the second draft of Chapter Two, etc, and that also enables me to measure my daily progress–“oh got another two chapters done today,” etc. etc. However, I am now going do this second draft completely differently; still chapter by chapter, but as one big document and I am going to try to revise it backwards; in other words, I am going to start with the last chapter, revise it, and work my way back to the front. I’ve become, as a result of the chapter method, very rigidly adherent to a mathematical process by which every chapter is the same length, or within 100 words of the same length; I am hoping that by doing the manuscript in this way the chapters will be as long as they need to be while I keep an eye on the overall length. Right now, at 25 chapters it comes in at slightly more than 77,000 words and that is without either the prologue or the epilogue….and this book’s epilogue is going to be longer than previous ones, so I need to be more mindful of length. I am also going to follow the outline I did Sunday, so I have a better idea of what needs to go in. (I am going to start the revising by grabbing the notes I made while outlining and going back in to fix those issues up.) I also think there are two important characters I’ve let languish on the sidelines a bit much; I’m going to try to figure out how to work them into the story more completely. This is a bit of a chore, since I am juggling one of my biggest casts ever, but it simply must be done.

And above all else, I’ve got to get Scotty’s voice right.

The voice must be right.

And I have to say, I do enjoy being in Scotty’s headspace.

And with a bit of trepidation, I venture back out of my home and into the world again; back to the spice mines. Wish me luck.

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