Digging Out

I’m baaaaack.  Sorry for the rather long intermission.

After a couple of flight delays, a whole bunch of snow and some serious snow plowing by the folks at the Philadelphia airport I finally made it home . But that was a week and a half ago and I'm just now getting back to this blog.

I have been in a funk. Can’t necessarily explain why but I just felt like I was in quicksand. And like digging out from the snow, I needed to dig out from whatever was weighing me down. Some of it may have had to do with the fact that this week I will be receiving my manuscript back from my editor. It seems to be yet another of those watershed moments.

Have you ever been waiting for news, like an evaluation or a report card? You sit and think about how you would like it all to turn out. I did that, I was hoping for high marks.

In reality, I had worked for some months now on convincing myself that there would definitely be some changes necessary once the editor read the manuscript, but, she had been hearing it section by section over the past several months in our writer’s workshop and her comments had been positive.

So I had worked at convincing myself that any editing she did would be relatively minor.

I know now that isn’t necessarily true. Many writers spend years writing their books …. YEARS!  Who was I to think that after spending what almost a  year writing mine that this first time the editor read it through as one whole manuscript it would be done? Well that is not real life.

I have spent the last several days preparing myself for what is bound to be a whole lot of revisions and rewrites. When will it finally be done? I have no clue. The thought of it taking another year, or two, or whatever it takes is hard for me. I like instant gratification. More than instant gratification, I want it to be good; I want it to be right.

I am taking a deep breath, trying to keep a positive attitude, reminding myself that whatever suggestions my editor makes and corrections she suggests are in my best interest, not a personal attack on me.

I will admit the thought of giving up crossed my mind when I started to consider another year or however long it would take me to get it right. But I have come this far, I know it can be good, and I know that I will be thanking my editor when it is accepted for publication. (Did you notice I said when, not if?)

I think the weather had something to do with me starting to feel better. Yesterday was in the mid 60’s here, sunny and beautiful. I cannot wait for spring! Today the rain and overcast returned and it is supposed to get cold again.  Let’s hope it doesn’t last long, I could use at least a week of sunny warm weather.

However, the thing that turned me around the most was a wonderful conversation with my daughter, wasn’t anything specifically she said, just helped me to talk about what was on my mind and let it go.

So I’m back at it, don’t be surprised if there are several blog posts in a rather short amount of time, need to catch up, you know.

So should we start a pool on how long it will take me to get this manuscript thing actually done and ready to send to an agent? (Be nice!)