Gone Revisin’
I know blogging has been light here lately. I’m revising a novel—the middle-grade that’s coming out from McElderry next year—and still working on the YA for Knopf, and now, joy of joys, bits and pieces of art are starting to come in for certain other projects (I can’t wait until I’m allowed to share peeks at stuff, but it won’t be for a while yet), and in short this is just a busy busy busy time.
But VERY SOON the novel will go back to my editor, and I will breathe a huge, liberated breath, and I might even start reading books again.*
I can’t read novels when I’m deep in a revision. Can’t get anyone else’s story mixed up in my brain. Which means it was TERRIBLY FOOLISH of me to read a third of the way into Connie Willis’s Blackout right before my manuscript was due to arrive with my editor’s notes. That is not a book to leave lingering for weeks on end.**
*That was a joke. I’m on a Cybils panel—of COURSE I’ll be reading books. Graphic novels. Delicious. I’m salivating already, and compiling my list…
**Which means Blackout will be back-burnered even longer. WHAT WAS I THINKING??
sarah says:
It is so exciting to think of two new books from you. The other day I was sorting my bookshelves for an upcoming garage sale, and the Bonny Glen series was most definitely asserted to be on the “keep” pile. I consider all my homeschooling efforts worthwhile because I have a child who wants to hold on to her favourite books for her own future children.
I understand you were joking about not reading other novels – but I don’t understand the joke. I am one of those sad people who always get others’ stories mixed up in my own.
On October 5, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Melissa Wiley says:
It’s only during revision, or maybe also in the last hard push toward finishing a first draft, if I’m on a deadline. A kind of hyperfocus thing?
On October 5, 2011 at 12:30 pm
tanita says:
I just can’t read things within the same genre; other genres I’m okay with. I tend to read a lot of mysteries, justferinstance, if I’m trying to revise the half of a middle grade summer vacation novel that wasn’t working.
Which I should get right back to… since I managed once again to get on a Cybils panel.
Part of me is thinking, “WHAT WAS I THINKING!” whilst the greedy bookmonger is thinking, “Ooooh! Books! Books!”
I think all of us are crazy.
On October 6, 2011 at 12:49 am
Teri says:
I just finished Blackout and All Clear, and they are really one super-long novel. And they are amazing, and intricate, and probably Willis’s best work. They are worth savoring.
Read them however makes you happy, of course, but I recommend that you set them aside until the revision process is over, and then start again so everything is fresh in your mind. You’ll want details from the beginning of Blackout to be pretty firm in your mind as you read through All Clear.
I should be grading composition essays and lit exams right now, and instead I am thinking about what Willis was able to do in those books — I finished a couple of days ago and I’m still in a hazy afterglow.
On October 6, 2011 at 6:10 am
Karen Edmisten says:
I agree that Blackout and All Clear are one super-long novel, and although I really enjoyed them, I did think that they could have/should have been edited into one volume. Did you think so, Teri?
Since my work is non-fiction, I get to indulge in novels while I’m working …. works out well for me! 🙂
On October 8, 2011 at 6:36 am