Merry and Bright Has Entered the Building

There are two types of professors out there right now: the ones who don’t have Christmas spirit until all the grades are in, and those whose Christmas spirit hopefully gets them through finals week. During finals week we give and grade exams, and it’s a pretty intense time.

I am one who uses Christmas spirit to get me through the week. Expect me to play Christmas carols in my office, to wear a lighted Christmas bulb necklace, and to be merry and bright (in a muted way, as I’m an introvert).

I have an essay final due on Friday at midnight, and I am going to spend Saturday evening and Sunday grading it and putting my class grades into our automated management system. So it’s a hurry up and wait week for me, and Sunday is going to be brutal. But the house is decked with greens and the carols are on the stereo. I’ll get by.

In a Stuck Place

So I’ve been told by my developmental editor that I need to rewrite Apocalypse — not because it’s so bad, she says, but because it’s so good. My developmental editor, Chelsea Harper, knows her stuff and I know she’s right. Apocalypse is the combination of the second and third books I’d written, and I didn’t know things that I know now.

Still, I’m finding it hard to rewrite. First, because my semester is winding down, I have end-of-semester items in mind even when I’m not doing them yet, things like the final exam and projects to grade.

Second, because — well, basically what I have to do with the rewrite is:
1) Stretch out three chapters into the first third of the book
2) Rewrite the rest of the book with fewer points of view
3) Cut out some of the lag from the second half of the book
4) Add more tension and loss.

I think I can deal with 2-4 relatively easily, but I struggle with stretching out that first three chapters to eight chapters. I’ve tried outlining it (being a plantser, or someone who roughly outlines and fills in) but I don’t feel the inspiration.

I think I need to sit with it a while, talk with my characters and see what it is they want to do.

Wish me luck.

Finals Week

I haven’t been doing any editing lately (apologies to my dev editor) because I’m in the middle of finals week. For those of you who have never been college students, this week is a twice-a-year ritual in which professors torture students by making them demonstrate that they actually know the course material. For those of you who have been college students, this week is a twice-a-year ritual in which professors torture students by — you get the drift.

From a professor’s point of view, it’s a strange week where office hours are empty and professors prowl around the halls to tell stories of the worst requests they’ve gotten from students. Best one yet: the student who demanded an A because his “answers were right”. (Spoiler: No, they weren’t.) It’s a hurry up and wait time, where one waits to give exams and then frantically grades them so that semester grades can be turned in by the following Monday.

It’s a time when the outside world is calling — in December, the delights of Christmas; in May the beautiful weather. But to the professor or instructor, they are at best fleeting until the grades go in.

*****

I am giving my first final today — actually, they are turning it in because it’s an essay final. I will spend the next couple days grading it. I am wearing my ugly Christmas sweater (the reinkitty one — think of Santa’s sleigh with cats) because I need a little Christmas during finals’ week.

I anticipate having grades done by Thursday to turn in, and then I’m done for the semester. I’ll restart editing Voyageurs then, in the hopes that it will be a worthy submission. I will wait for query responses on Prodigies, hoping for a Christmas present.

May your days be merry and bright.

Don’t worry about editing — yet.

I’ve been running into some difficulties writing on Whose Hearts Are Mountains, and the reason why is because I’ve been ignoring one of the big lessons of NaNoWriMo — don’t worry about editing until I’m done with the first draft.

It’s hard not to — I’ll be writing and suddenly realize I’ve contradicted myself. I fix contradictions when I see them, and then I get off-track because it takes a while to hunt them down. And then I start worrying about “Have I gotten enough foreshadowing here?” and “Did I forget this plot thread?” and then I get all muddled up and want to cry.

What I need to do now is write. I need to get those pure ideas on the page and hash out the continuity and the foreshadowing later.

I need to play with the story first.

Then I can do the editing.

**********

I’ll have unexpected time this week to write: I got done grading the big assignment in my classes — seven hours of straight grading, at the end of which I thought my eyes might be bleeding. Now for the easiest week of my semester, because my finals are multiple-choice and online, which means they grade themselves.