Last night I wrote the last words of the first draft of Godblind 2: Godblinder (not really).
While this is a triumph of extreme proportions and weighs in at 130,000 magical words, it’s not as triumphant as I’d wanted – my self-imposed deadline was the end of April, not 8 May.
Persnickety? Maybe. But that extra week was intended to allow me breathing space to help with the rewrites before the official submission deadline of 1 July. Now I don’t have that breathing space. So, naturally, I’m blogging instead of editing.
The plan now is to reread it, making large notes in red along the lines of: WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? and NO, MORON, HE DIED THREE CHAPTERS AGO! SHEESH, YOU’RE A LOSER.
There’s also a couple of character and plot arcs to rewrite – like, why does EVERYTHING happen in a six-chapter period two thirds of the way through the book? What exactly has happened in the previous 80,000 words? Why don’t you split some of those events up, maybe, like, I don’t know, so they’re MORE SPACED OUT AND THUS PLEASING TO PLOT, EDITOR, AUTHOR AND AUDIENCE? SHEESH.
Once that rewrite is out of the way, I’ll probably send it to my agent and then go and cower under the bed for a week, then rewrite it again incorporating his suggestions (of which there will be many) and then it will be time to go to the editor. At which point I might leave the country and accidentally-on-purpose not tell them where I’m going.
So, seven weeks to deadline, five weeks until Godblind is published and all associated promo activity must be undertaken, and two more drafts of Godblind 2 to write.
They say sleep is for wimps. Fine. I’m a wimp. Deal with it.
Currently watching: Doctor Who past and present (Doctors 3 and 12)
Currently listening: ELO, Alone in the Universe
Currently reading: Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones
Anna Stephens, word seeker 