Category Archives: Cogging for Kibble

Hello, Wall…

I have spent the day wandering aimlessly through the copy-edits, forgetting what I’m looking for and waffling between agreeing with the copy-editor and asking to stet some of the capitalization changes. On the up side, I’ve discovered that I want to change how I present the term ‘neopagan’ (Neopagan, neo-pagan, Neo-Pagan, neo-Pagan… gah) because this would make the fourth time it’s been edited differently in a book of mine, and darn it, I’d like to at least present a façade of consistency. (Why did this not occur to me the other three times I went through copy-edits on a book? Who knows?) I changed a few other things I thought were fine on the first pass, and stealthily added about eight hundred words to the hearthcraft book while doing on-line research to avoid working on the copy-edits, plus more in a new document that I’ll have to rewrite and paste into the main file next week. It’s been the kind of day where if I knew this morning what I know now, I would have just spent the day on the chesterfield with a notebook and a pile of real books to sort through, and perhaps accomplished something more useful.

No, wait, I made two loaves of bread and some sweet buns. That was useful. Of course, I forgot about planning dinner, so that may cancel out the production of useful bread products.

Jan came over for our regular Friday writing thing and we had a couple of conversations about conferences and the pagan community that made me think about how I respond to both of these things thanks to past experiences, and decide that maybe, just maybe, the next time I’m asked to be a guest I might say yes.

Tonight is opening night for the show HRH is stage managing, so break a leg, all! (Or a string, if you’re in the orchestra.)

Er

I just finished the first pass through the copy-edits.

I feel somewhat guilty. It’s really not supposed to be this straightforward. A tiny part of my brain is suggesting that maybe I just wrote a really clear, solid book, but the rest of my brain is jumping on it and screeching at it to shut up, because that’s tantamount to saying “Things can’t possibly get any worse!”

I’m going to get up, walk away for a bit, and then come back to start a second pass. And there are some things I want to check, particularly about capitalization/lowercase issues; I think I may stet about half of them. But overall, um, I’m kind of done.

ETA: It is Very Nice that another tiny bit of my brain just went, “Oh, yay! We can go back to writing the hearthcraft book now!” It’s good to see that somewhere inside, I am still excited about this book.

And Lo, The Copy-Edits Continued…

Slog. Slog.

I appear to have an apologetic copy-editor. “I may be being nit-picky, but this seems unclear” she says of an out-and-out contradiction in a set of instructions. And she’s not doing the false modesty thing; she’s genuinely apologetic. Bless her. I told her not to apologize for finding a mistake, and thanked her.

Back to your regular browsing. Nothing to see here.

(In moments of escaping from the copy-edits, I have been pricing computers. I am surprised and pleased at how little I’m going to have to pay for something that meets my needs, i.e. what the rest of the world considers basic, especially since I have all my peripherals. And that’s including an extended service plan to cover the odd things that happen to my computers every eighteen to twenty-four months or so. Encouraging. I’ve never had a brand-new-everything-at-once system built by someone not me or a friend. This will be interesting.)

So Far

I have worked through three chapters plus one intro of copy-edits, and am still alive.

I still really, really need a break. Except I’m going to lose most of the afternoon to a doctor’s appointment and then going to pick the boy up, so I’m trying to get as much done as possible before I have to stop.

ETA: Four.

ETA: Five. Over halfway done! I really should stop or I’ll run out of energy and be useless for the rest of the day. I should have lunch, distract the mind with a book for a bit, then maybe make some longhand scribbles for the hearthcraft book… and leave the rest for Wednesday.
I really, really wish I could finish this today — it would do my general work-related confidence a lot of good, as well as my anxiety about how to make the hearthcraft book settle down because I’d be able to go right back to it — but I have no idea what I may run into that may require serious rewriting. Handling rewrites and copy-edits involves constantly being on guard or on edge as you scroll to the next page and scan for the red marks, and that’s wearing in its own way. And then if you find a place that demands extensive reworking, that obviously takes a lot of energy to handle. And being newly hyper-sensitive about the amount of energy I have to spend daily, well, I’m trying to play it safe, even though it’s going against my natural inclination to keep pushing to finish it all as soon as possible. Doing that and burning myself out for the next three days does no good at all.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 43,049
New words today: 1,361

More deity stuff. And research to get it because “so-and-so: this culture’s god of hearthfire” does not an adequate base for expansion make.

I’m seeing less and less places that need expansion, though, as I skim the document to find places to work on. This is good but also somewhat unnerving, because as I mentioned earlier, I’m dealing with the whole ‘this feels too vague’ issue. (I must explain! I must explain more! I must — no wait, the editors always gently tell me that I’ve made my point and this now qualifies as redundant, no matter how beautifully it’s written.). There are two chapters that have pretty much nothing in them, however. I think next time I sit down to this I’ll have to go through each chapter carefully to see what’s there, what’s missing, and make note of what needs work so I don’t overdose on overexplanation when I could be, you know, actually putting something in for the first time in another chapter.

Monday, however, will not be that day; the copy-edits for the pregnancy book landed in my in-box today, and are due back a week from Monday. Next week is therefore another rewrite session. The sooner I get that done, the sooner I can get back to working on the hearthcraft book. I scanned the first third of the book and didn’t find much other than standardization of certain things, although there seems to be a gratuitous change in spelling for a deity name; I’ll have to see if there’s an argument for it included somewhere. I’m crossing my fingers that the copy-edits are all that straightforward.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 41,688
New words today: 1,491

I combined two chapters, moved a few pages around to other chapters to create better flow, talked about ethics and composting (not the ethics of composting, which is something entirely different). Is that all I did? It feels like I did nothing. I could have done so much more, but I just can’t focus or get into the damn thing or something. Gah. I should be happy I’m finding even fifteen hundred words’ worth of things to say these days.

I am currently struggling with the suspicion that this is all much too vague. It’s never as bad as I think it is, which ought to be reassuring.

I really, really wish I could somehow shift my productive time so that I’m not in the swing of things when the boy comes home.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 40,197
New words today: 2,724

More trying to define spirituality, as well as writing about needfires and smooring. I’m not sure how I got that many words down today; it certainly didn’t feel like that many when I was digging for them. All I knew is that I really, really wanted to break 40K.

This was a bad day in terms of physical pain.

I have to fly to pick the boy up at five.