THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

I’m done, I’m through, I’m exhausted and happy.

Just a few minutes ago I put the last period on the last line of the last sentence of my cozy. It’s not really finished. Nothing is really ever finished until you can’t change one jot or tittle of it. With a book that means after it’s printed. I’m only done with this revision, and boy, was it ever a lulu.

Tomorrow, after I make sure that all the ducks on my thumb drive are in order, I’m taking it off to Staples and having MY NOVEL printed on paper from the first word to the last. For me that is the achievement of a lifetime and I’m going to milk this happy glow for all it’s worth.

After that it’s more revision. But I want you know how much I’m going to enjoy this one.

1. it will be on paper. That means I can flop anywhere and read it, mark it up, scratch out whole sections and put others in.
2. it has been written from front to back. It’s a whole story and I can read it like one and make sense of it.
3. The pages can be flipped back and forth, I can see things more clearly, see where a sentence could be to better advantage if I placed it just so, where a scene might need more something.

Oh, you can do all that on your computer using state-of-the-art programs and what-not? Well I can’t. And I’ve heard the moaning and groaning that accompanies learning how to manipulate these programs. I am barely computer literate. Jane Austen did just fine without a computer program, but, unfortunately, I somehow sense that given one, and the computer to go with it, she would be able to make better use of it than I can.

But, nevertheless, I have reached a jumping off point in the revision process. I’m one step closer to being able to submit my cozy somewhere. I had set a goal to finish this revision by September, and I’m only a little late. I’ll have to work harder on paper.

I will be pitching this in November (beginning of!) to an agent (as yet unknown) at the annual New England Crime Bake in Massachusetts. It is organized by the New England Chapters of Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Sounds good, no? Heidi and Karen, fellow bloggers here, will be going also. The line-up of classes is very impressive and we’re looking forward to going. So, the next sound that you hear will be that of a whip cracking. Maybe several whips, if H and K are pitching also.

The life of a writer is a hectic one. If I’d started sooner I might have had several books under my belt by now, but I’ve always been a late bloomer, and life is as it is. So, hecticity stalks me, and I embrace it. What else can you do with a socially accepted addiction.