I did it. I turned in the first draft of Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies last week. I celebrated with chocolate. I celebrated with a contest on DearEditor.com. I celebrated with a thorough house reorganization, top to bottom, closet to closet, dust bunny to dust bunny. And I celebrated with an uninterrupted weekend of play with my four favorite fellas, complete with swimming at the pool, hiking in the chaparral, the group reading of a brand new book (The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes), and the watching of a brand new movie.
And now it’s Monday. I’ve officially got five days to write nothing Dummies-related. And then, I’m back at the grind. Because with a content editor, a copyeditor, and a technical editor all reviewing that first draft, there’re bound to be revisions. I’ve been promised there will be. Of course there will. That’s part of writing. No one nails every single word on the first draft . . . a fact that I talk about in that first draft. It is a book about writing a book, after all. Revision is a part of every writer’s life.
But revision isn’t where my mind is right now. I’ll have plenty of opportunity to think about that come Friday. For today, I get to turn to the thousand things that have awaited my attention. 1,000 things. 5 days. That comes out to 200 things a day….
Oh my.
