Tempest RisingWriting Process

On Commitment Issues and Revisions. . .

So, those that know me are probably aware that I have commitment issues.  I like being footloose and fancy free.  I can always (I hope) be relied on as a friend, but things that tie me down make me all nervy and shaky, and I may bolt.  I even pursued a career that means I only have to be in the same place about 8 months of the year, and the rest of the time I can wander around the earth like a lost soul.  A marvelously content lost soul.

I am also an extremely OCD perfectionist.  Indeed, the only thing that made me comfortable with having to attach myself to one place for a WHOLE eight months of the year  was the fact that in that place I could keep a Dyson.  A sweet, sweet Dyson with which I could clean.  Obsessively.  

So now that I sound well crazy, let me get to my point.  Which is that I’m starting TODAY on “final” revisions for Tempest Rising, and I am kakking it.  Through this whole process, I have been saying, “It ain’t over til the fat lady sings.”  But the fat lady has begun to warm up her tonsils, and this is the beginning of the end of me being able to continually bother Jane & Co. 

I spend about an hour, every day, turning about various sentences in this manuscript or Tracking’s.  I am like the Henry James of Urban Fantasy.  Minus the genius.  And the confusion over my repressed sexuality.  But the whole point is that I get to tinker to my heart’s content.  Now, however, the tinkering is not tinkering, but FINAL REVISIONS, and the choices I make are going into galleys, then some other stuff I can’t remember, but eventually into ARC’s and the FINAL PUBLISHED BOOK.  AAAAGH!

Terrifying.  I will be MARRIED TO MY CHOICES.  And that’s a word that gives me hives.  Marriage, btw, not choices . . . I enjoy choices.  But marriage?  AGH!

What if I miss a colon?  Seriously?  I may cry.  A repeated repeated word word?  That might bring on a heart attack.  And what if, gods forbid, I one day realize there was SUCH A better way to put something, and I missed that opportunity?  I’ll probably write it in the margins.  And stare at it, disgruntled, for days.

So, yes, I am crazy.  And yes, I am apparently being forced to commit to something.

BTW, I am stretching my neck.  I am not frantically looking around for my running shoes.  Really.

6 thoughts on “On Commitment Issues and Revisions. . .”

  1. Like Jack said: "She was always already writing this book". And look at it this way, you can always re-write the thing if you hate what you did that much (like Shelley's Frankenstein). Though who reads the revised version?

  2. Okay, that comment absolutely destroys me and makes me want to blush and giggle. You can read the revised version if you want. 😉 But other than you (my dear Reader) and my other Dear Readers, just editor and probably agent (I'm assuming). And the rest of Orbit probably. And my film agent, probably. And . . .

    Can I just call everyone my minions? "Entourage" is so '02.

  3. I think it was Peter Elbow, commenting on the revision process, who said that a piece of writing is never "finished." It is always a work in progress, and the only real decision is when you decide to impose an arbritary stopping point and tell TPTB to take it from you.

  4. Great allusion! And I just "fixed" like five things in this blog post, after reading your comment. So I think my problem is that I AM having to call a stop to the futzing process. I enjoy a good futz.

    Oy vey.

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