Wow. Are we halfway through the month again? That didn’t feel like it took long. Well, okay, the last one was kind of late, wasn’t it?
Anyway… let’s get to it.
The past few weeks have sucked. There’s been roadwork all around my house and actually right in front of my house. Like, the little jackhammer-Bobcat was fifteen feet from my office window. Ripping up all the landscaping in the parking strip I spent the past year or two working on. And the sidewalk. And the curb. And parts of the street. And the sidewalk across the street. That went on for, ha ha ha, well, it’s been two weeks and technically it’s still going on, it’s just moved far enough up the street that I can almost blot out the sound by cranking up my earbuds.
Plus, the neighbors on one side are getting a new roof, so those guys have had an air compressor running between our two houses. And on the other side, two houses down, we think someone’s flipping the house and they’ve got a whole crew in there doing stuff. Loud stuff.
And on top of all that… there’s a neighborhood cat we’ve been calling Vincent (one of his ears is kind of mangled) who decided our place might make a good full time home. Which we weren’t against (he’s a cool and handsome man-about-town), but he kept getting beat up really bad by another cat (the Orange Whip) who passes through once or twice a day. So then he was slashed up. And lost a lot of fur. And a lot of weight. And injured one of his legs bad enough he was just dragging it behind him. We kept trying to help and cater to him, but last week we realized he’d hit the point where he wasn’t going to recover from any of this. So, with great regret and a lot of tears, we made sure he didn’t suffer any more.
TL;DR—the first weeks of May have not been very productive. There’s a fair argument to be made they’ve been a bit damaging on the sleep/ stress/ mental health fronts. Actually, no argument. The past few weeks have sucked hard.
With all that in mind…
As I type this I’m 212 pages into the rewrites/edits of GJD. A little more than halfway in this single-spaced draft. My early readers caught a lot of things that I definitely need to tweak, and offered a few comments that made me want to adjust a few more. Fortunately, it’s almost all the kind of thing that once you see the problem, you know how to fix the problem. I think there’s a good chance I can still have this done by the end of the month, when I promised it to my agent.
Which means it’s still on schedule to get to you.
On the flip side, that last short story I owed an anthology did not get done during these weeks, and I’m probably going to be getting that one to the editor right under the wire. An unfortunate but necessary reshuffling of priorities.
That’s one aspect of this whole professional writing thing I don’t see folks talk about that often. Sometimes… life happens. You end up moving a little slow because of stuff at home. Maybe you need to take a personal day or three. And when you do, hopefully your boss is one of those cool, progressive bosses who doesn’t glorify working yourself to death or berate you for missing a day or needing time off. Hopefully they understand there’s more to life than work and sometimes… work needs to be flexible.
This is especially true if your boss is you. Yeah, there’s always going to be deadlines or something that just can’t move. But if there’s a ton going on in your life… don’t make things worse for yourself if you don’t have to. Be that understanding boss you always wish you had.
Anyway…
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching— Barry (only the first season, no spoilers!!), The Why Files, still enjoying Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading— Walking the Dusk by Mike Robinson
Cool New Toys – We’re closing in on my birthday, so I’m not allowed to get myself anything. Well, I try to restrain myself, anyway. But I still picked up a T’Challa Starlord (from What If… ) on eBay because it was a fantastic price. Also another Talos/ Skrull I found at a local used toy store. And Morphonauts sent me a few of their beautiful resin ExTerminator figures.