Deadline Week Rundown

This is what last (deadline) week looked like for me:

Monday - Friday:

6 am - Woke up, drank coffee, and worked on my revision for the new book.

7:30 am - Woke the kids up, drank coffee, and got them ready for school.

9 am - Returned home from dropping off the kids, drank coffee, dinked around on the internet and/or called my agent / editor to freak out over my impending deadline and book issues.

10 am - 4 pm WORKED WORKED WORKED on the revision, eating lunch at my desk. Also drank some coffee.

4 pm - Picked up my kids. Homework. Shenanigans.

6 pm - Threw something together for dinner and shuttled the kids to various activities and / or found a movie for them to watch so I could WORK WORK WORK on my novel.

8 pm - Bedtime for kiddos, which is always a circus entitled, Tricks My Children Do To Avoid Going To Bed. I should charge admission for this. . .

9 pm - WORKED WORKED WORKED on the novel.

12 am - Went to bed. Stared up at the ceiling thinking about the revisions.

1 am - Fell into fitful sleep in which I actually revised my novel in my dreams. All night long I wrestled with phantom lines.

5 am - Woken up by two cats jumping all over me who had decided it was time for the human to WAKE UP AND PLAY. Threw ungrateful cats out of the bedroom.

6 am - Started all over again.



Behold the oh-so-glamourous life of a writer! It went like this until Friday, where I'll add -

11:52 pm (8 minutes before my deadline) - Pressed send to give the draft back to my editor

12 am - Went to bed, stared up at the ceiling for no good reason.

3 am - Finally got my brain to turn off enough to fall asleep. But that's okay because it's Saturday so I can sleep in. . .

5 am - Woken up by my 4 year old because she was cold. Also, was it time for cartoons?


The weekend was a total blur- not even sure what I did there--maybe cleaned up the house and had some friends over for both me and the kids, ate donuts and pizza, played the game Munchkin for the first time, which was highly entertaining, but mostly just sat still with my brain going DUHHHHHH DOHHHHHHH DERRRRRRRR.



Which leads me to this morning, which went like this:

7 am - Woke up and laid in bed for a while.

7:30 am - Woke the kids up and got them ready for school

9 am - Returned home and threw myself into my To Do pile: finished several writer errands I've been procrastinating on, like signing up for YASH and filling out my author profile stuff they make me do for every book for the new book, sent a barrage of emails

10 am - Stared at the computer.

11 pm - Spent an hour making homemade banana bread. The house now smells amazing.

12 pm - Ate leftover pizza and took a shower so long it would have made Al Gore cry.

1 pm - Stared at the computer.

1:30 pm - Wrote a bizarre blog post about my schedule for the past week.

2 pm - Eyed the notebook for the next project. . .

2:03 - Picked up a pen.

In the Cave

Hi.

This is me in my revision cave right now:

(There is always a point when I think I'm going to drown in here. I've officially hit that point. . .)

I'll catch up with you sometime next week.

Diving Deep

Okay, so I've got my new edits letter back from the lovely F, my editor, so I'm ready to dive deep into the next draft of Boundless. Only one big change this time, so hopefully we'll be in production soon.

And school just started, for me and my son. And I am writing the scenes for my short story, which is due soon, while my students are doing their writing exercises. Yes, I have reached that point where I may draft almost an entire story IN CLASS. I love the idea. I have 6 scenes to go. It tells you how tired I already am that 6 scenes seems like a lot.

I'm officially overwhelmed. I am keeping the metaphorical paper bag close by, just in case I need to breathe into it for a while.

So I don't have a lot to blog about currently, because blogging will take up time I don't have, but instead of my own post I thought I might offer you this, which is an interview I did that's up this week on the Starry Eyed Revue. I talk about my writing life, Boundless, my favorite characters, and a little bit about my new projects. I am also offering a signed copy of Hallowed for their giveaway and two little swag packs, so be sure to enter the contest while you are there.

Here it is! Enjoy.

I'll be back next time I come up for air.

The Very Busy Spider

Ever so often, I read this book to my son:

It's about a spider building a web.

On every page, a new animal shows up and asks the spider to hang out with it: "'Quack, quack,' said the duck. 'Want to go for a swim?'" But the spider never answers. She is always very busy spinning her web. This goes on and on, page after page, from morning until night, the spider not responding to anybody, just spinning and spinning and spinning, until finally she finishes her web. Then an owl flies by and says, "Who? Who? Who built this beautiful web?" But the spider doesn't answer then, either. She's asleep. "It had been a very, very busy day." And thus ends the book.

I am so totally the spider right now.

(Eric Carle, by the way=genius.)

So. I have turned in the next round of revisions for BOUNDLESS. Over the past several weeks many, many people have tried to get my attention, and I have not responded. So sorry for that, people. I was very busy spinning my web.

Revisions are usually tough and slow for me, but THIS revision. Oh dear Lord. So many threads. So many characters and their arcs. So much to set up. There were days a pesky fly flew into my web and thrashed it to shreds. There were days when I was inexorably trapped in the web and I started to feel suspiciously like the pesky fly. There were days I honestly considered whether this web-spinning thing was a healthy career decision. 

I drank a lot of iced tea. Which helped me stay up into the wee cool hours of the morning when the house was quiet and I could think. And then I would lie in bed later trying to turn off my brain, which insisted on revising my book, even when I'd clearly told it to stop. Even in my sleep, I revised. I often woke with a dull headache and the sense that I had been working all night.

I am a morning person, by the way. I suck as a night owl.

I am, quite frankly, exhausted.

Stay tuned for the Grouchy Ladybug, is what I'm saying. . .

But, at least for now, it's turned in. I am finally free to work on a new project. (and possibly a new, NEW project that is Unearthly-related. I shall tell you when I know. . .) And this is great. I have been wanting to work on my new project for almost a year, and I can't wait to really dig into it.

Tonight my husband came into my office to warn me about a spider on the back patio, who was building an enormous web. My husband thought it would be, er, icky, if I walked into that web on my way to water the lawn in the morning.

"He's out there now, building it?" I asked. For some reason I think of this spider as a he. Don't ask me why.

Yes, he was.

I went out on the patio and located said spider-and-web. My husband was right; it's a big web. The supports easily stretch across a ten-foot space, with the center positioned to intercept any unlucky bug who happens to make a suicide-run for the porch light. (Well played, spider. Well played.)

I've seen this spider before. He's a very large orange and black orb weaver, with stripey legs exactly like in the Eric Carle book. I have resisted the temptation to squash him, because he eats many bugs, and he's not doing any harm or trying to get in the house to bite my babies. He's a good spider, and I have just read Charlotte's Web to my son and James and The Giant Peach and I am supposed to be okay with good spiders. (Embarrassing side note: someone recently asked my son about reading Charlotte's Web. He said he never wanted to read it again. Because it -and I quote- "makes Mommy cry like crazy." Seriously, though. Those last lines: "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both." I could start sobbing right now. . .)

Ahem. So back to the patio spider. I haven't ever seen a spider building its web before, not in real life, anyway. So I stood there for a good twenty minutes and watched as the little guy worked to fill in the web. Around and around and around he went, the glossy threads occasionally catching the light. And I noticed one thing right off:

Part of the web is easy for the spider. Starting from the bottom left, he just cruises along, goes a little bit, secures the thread to the support, spins a bit more, secures, climbs the left side, secures the line, goes across the top, spins, secures, spins, secures. No problem, right?

Until he hits the top right, and he has to go down.

Then the spider falls out of his rhythm, he wobbles, the entire web dangles unsteadily as he lowers himself, secures the line, twists and waves his legs frantically and looks all kinds of unbalanced, then finally reaches the bottom and hiccups across two more anchors before he finds his groove again.

Every single time.

I can practically hear the little guy cussing: "Oh for $%^&&**$*!!!! This stupid #$^*&#$&!!! web!!!!" And toward the end there he was looking so very tired. Like, "Please, please, can't this web  be finished now? Pant, pant. I need a vacation." But on he went, until the web was done. I wish I could have taken a picture of it for you, but it would not show up with my camera. Trust me, it was glorious.

It made me smile. Because I am so totally that spider.

This web building stuff is HARD. Even for spiders. And they were made to spin.


(This web is a fair approximation of what both my spider's web and BOUNDLESS look like right now. . .)

Join me tomorrow morning where I forget about the web and walk right into it on my way to water the lawn and run around screaming and swiping at myself. Because that's going to be fun.

Cracking

I just received my first round of notes on Book 2 from my editor, which means, while it was nice seeing the light of day up here on the sunny surface for a few weeks, now I've got to dive down again. Back to the cave. And, like with my revisions of Unearthly, there are wrecking balls crashing through the carefully-constructed house that is my book, which is painful but necessary, even more necessary than last time.

Because this book has to be wonderful.

Here's why: This is a sequel. In my lovely editor's words, it has to be fabulous, in some ways even more fabulous, than Book 1.

Something that has kept me up nights is Richelle Mead saying, after she read my book and gave me that wonderful blurb, that she was laying awake at nights wondering what would happen next. As in Book 2. A few days ago, Melissa Marr tweeted that she was definitely going to read my Book 2. Melissa. Marr. These people, in my world, are rock stars. And they are waiting for my Book 2. As are the tons of readers who have read Unearthly and then promptly bombarded me with emails about how there has to be a Book 2, where's Book 2?, when's Book 2 coming out?, we can't wait for Book 2!!

No pressure or anything. :) It's a nice problem to have, my dad keeps reminding me. Yep. It's the kind of problem you dream about, as a young writer. And Unearthly leaves some definitely unresolved issues. Yes, I'm aware. Let me tell you about the first draft, which ended on the line, "Come with me." on page 427. Talk about cliffhangers.

So. Back to the writing I go. I've found that I always go through a seriously emotional process when I get notes back: first, I mourn. I wallow. I cry and feel stupendously sorry for myself. Then I rage. I contemplate killing off characters just because I can't think of how to deal with them anymore. I doubt everything. I seethe with anger, because my book, which I worked so hard on, is not perfect. Not even close to perfect.

And then I get over it. I accept that the book is flawed, that I, as a writer, even with all my fancy degrees and know-how, am deeply flawed. I tell myself what I tell my students: real, gut-wrenching, wrecking-ball revision is what separates the amateurs from the professionals. I remind myself that I trust my editor. I look back over the notes. I see the wisdom in what she's telling me. And then I get cracking.

Right now I am still cracking on Chapter 1, which is slow progress, but the book is shaping itself up in my mind and the first chapter of a sequel is a very tricky thing, dangit!

This whole revision process is complicated, this time around, by the fact that Unearthly hits bookshelves in 2 WEEKS!!! And I still have my website to finalize, swag to get organized, a gazillion interviews to do and a tour to prepare for. ( I am still stoked, so freakishly excited, about going back to my hometown of Idaho Falls for the launch! Not to mention the Dark Days tour!) Plus there's Christmas and family and finals week at Pepperdine.

This takes the word BUSY to a whole new level. There have been times over this past week where I've wanted to scream, to no one in particular: Just. Let. Me. Write!!!!!!!

Again, nice problems to have. This is also the part where my dad says something like "houses are built by putting in one nail at a time," and everybody in my life, my husband, my parents, my friends, all start chanting, "You can do it!" (Thanks, everybody in my life.), except my son.

He just wants to know why he can't have a candy cane for breakfast.