Oy!
Sep
12
2006

There are days and then there are DAYS. Yesterday was a DAY. The wee monster is going through a stage right now where she’s whiny and not sleeping well. She’s also clingy which makes it hard to get any work done. She didn’t even take her 90 minute nap yesterday so I didn’t get much done. I think it’s a growth spurt and a new tooth coming in, combined with her brothers going to school and a big change in her schedule. But I took them all to the library yesterday afternoon and the 5 year old is running in the parking lot and the 9 year old is whiny and can’t choose a book and wee monster is like a great dane on a leash and I’m trying to juggle them all, keep them alive and get my books that were on hold. The car is a nightmare of whining and yelling and crying.

All I want to do is have them all asleep so I can get some work done! I’d figured out yesterday the perfect spot to add a bit of backstory to explain my character’s behavior and I wanted to add it. I also had a shitload of work to do to get it turned in by Wednesday to my agent as promised.

So I settle in and start to work my ass off editing – at this stage, I work from paper to the computer and I’m going back and forth, I correct and add for about thirty pages or until I hit a spot I need to add a scene to. I look at the paper and my screen and the sentence I want to add to a certain paragraph is not on my screen. I look again, and once more and it’s not there.

Well I have a touchpad mouse and sometimes the heel of my hand touches it and selects a paragraph and even cuts it so I’m like, “hm, did I do that?” and add the paragraph into the text and then I get a sinking feeling.

Moving to the end of the manuscript I see the old ending. Shit. I have been editing the older version of the fecking manuscript for two days. I panic for a moment, run downstairs and look and thank god I’ve got the documents where I sent half and half to beta.

After really being upset and mad at myself for such a stupid, rookie mistake, I did realize that most of my real changes between the manuscript I’d been editing and the final were at the very end anyway and I hadn’t gotten there yet. And all my edits since I got crit back were on the older document (I expanded the opening and changed some scenes for POV). But it doesn’t look as dire, or even as difficult to deal with as it did at first glance, thank god. So I’ll have to cut and paste the end onto the doc I’m working on and just do a quick run through and compare of the old one to be sure I didn’t miss anything. But still, GAH!

I was so upset I just put it down and read for a few hours before going to sleep. I do feel better about it today though and hope to get some work done during the wee monster’s naptime (should she actually decide to take one, sigh)

3 comments to “Oy!”

  1. Eden Bradley
    September 12th, 2006 at 4:33 pm · Link

    Hope your day is better today and you can get some writing done!



  2. Lauren
    September 12th, 2006 at 9:56 pm · Link

    Well today has been a pain for a whole different set of reasons. Sigh. But I did get the differences between the two versions straight and I’m ready to start again in earnest once I wrestle the monsters to bed.



  3. Kathy Wheatley
    September 13th, 2006 at 6:01 am · Link

    Lauren,
    Breathe…breathe, and another breath, now think calmness….it will get better… in the the words of someone or other: “this, too, shall pass” Hope Wednesday is better for the writing!