Yes, when she’s not parading hungry friends through the house, coming in to my office with up-to-the-minute alerts on the life-and-death urgency attendant upon me enrolling her in breakdancing lessons (“EVERYONE knows how to breakdance, mom! EVERYONE BUT ME!”), or coming up with meticulously hand-drawn, color-coded, shockingly usurious price-tables meant to be applied to the smallest of household chores, daughter has been surgically grafted to the couch with her PSP.
I’m allowing her two weeks of this swinish indulgence, then she’s off to camp.
Actually, in general, I’m turning a blind eye to the swinish indulgence—to all of my motherly chores and duties, really—because I’m elbows-deep in the edits on Book 2. My editing process follows an extremely predictable sequence:
1) Panic. I have no idea how to accomplish what my editor wants. She wasn’t supposed to notice any of these problems! She was supposed to look at the kittens tumbling over there in the corner! Look! Kittens! Playing with string! WHY DIDN’T YOU LOOK AT THE KITTENS?
2) Deep contemplation. OK, fine. I have to fix these things. The kittens aren’t cutting it. Intolerable little failures. So what do I do? Move this thing? If I move this thing, I have to cut that thing! And I LIKE that thing! Maybe if I throw in a gun. That always helps. Whoops, now the main character’s shot herself dead on page 110. What the hell’s wrong with you, main character? Are you some kind of idiot? Kick a kitten.
3) Black despair. Start making a list of all the plot holes, even the ones the editor didn’t catch. Write it in lipstick on a mirror. Curl up in the fetal position in an unfilled bathtub, weeping.
4) Awakening hope. Sit up in the bathtub, shout “Eureka!” Forget the gambolling kittens, I’ll replace them with PUPPIES! Puppies will solve all my problems!
5) Frenzied rewriting. There’s nothing better than puppies! And these are going to be the cutest, most precious puppies ever! No one can do puppies like me! What a fool I was to ever send a kitten in to do a puppy’s work! OK, maybe there are still a few tiny holes, mere pinpricks really, and she’ll NEVER notice them once she gets a load of these adorable puppies ….
Anyway, I’m up to #5, and the last 100 pages. The last hundred pages of this book are kind of a bitch, though, so I’m occasionally having to go back and cycle through steps #1 to #4 (Luckily, I have discovered that I can leapfrog over #3—thus saving big on my lipstick bills—by taking a long walk with the dog). In the last 100 pages of this book, I have to tie up plot threads from BOTH books. And keep the plot moving swiftly. And keep the puppies doing their little tricks.
Oh, she’s gonna LOVE the puppies!
In other news, if you’re in Portland and would like to participate in a really incredible fiction-writing workshop, you should check out the 6-week course Shia LeBoeuf Dougas Lain is teaching through Portland Parks and Recreation:I’m going to be giving a presentation at one of the classes, apparently. I will be reading my 20,000 word manifesto on puppies, kittens, the evils of fiat currency, and how I think Ron Paul would look good in a speedo. But wait, there’s more! There will also be non-insane writers on hand, like Jay Lake, Mary Robinette Kowal, Eileen Gunn, Ken Scholes, and Tina Connolly.
Classes start July 1. There’s still time to sign up. Be there or be quadrilateral.
