Perhaps too close.
There was no school this week due to a little thing called "ski week." True.
I only know one person who was actually going skiing. Everyone else......well, off to do fabulous things. For example, my boss went to ROME! Yes, that Rome. The one with the Colosseum and all of that cool Roman stuff.
I am trying hard not to be jealous.
I mean, I got to do something cool, too.
I got to sit in my chair.
A lot.
The first half of the week, I spent revising Keelie of the Lake before it went off to my writing group. (I have a love/hate relationship with sending stuff to readers....so terrifying and yet completely freeing. Nice to have something out of your own hands for a bit.) But not five minutes after I finish, the line-edits for Trinket arrive.
Line-edits.
What is a line-edit? I wish I could scan a page and show you, but that would take precious time away from me and my chair...I mean, I would have to stand up and go over to the scanner....too much time away from chair.
We are as one now, executive brown chair and I.
But a line edit is when your editor lets you know that you used the word looked already three times on the same page, and perhaps you should save italics for when you really need them, and my, aren't you fond of those little dots....(there they are again!) and how can your character possibly see if the other character gulped when you said on page 137 that she is behind the character? And how could she pull such and such from her pocket on 198 if she left it on the table on 195? And you explained the situation this way on page 145, yet this way on 215...which is it? (You used those dots again!) Can you tone down the hungry bits? Your characters are always starving.
In other words, line edits for me = hard work. Brain work.
But I am getting there.
I'd like to have the line-edits done in a few weeks. Hopefully. March is one crazy month. (Remember, I am the mother of Irish dancers.) And next week, my lovely Writing Club 5th graders are performing the world premiere of A GOOD KNIGHT'S REST to kick off Read Across America.
And one of my babies has a birthday in early March.
Busy, busy, busy.
(Shhhhh...I kind of have an idea for a new picture book.....shhhhh....not allowed to work on it now or anything.........or am I?)
Get back to work.
Uh oh. Executive brown chair is bugging. Sheesh.
hrh