The plan is good, as long as nobody asks about the plan

writing schedules and other concerns

I corresponded with my agent recently. It can be extremely useful to have a good agent. They can help with things that are probably far beyond their purview, and yours, like your feelings vis-a-vis a book, or your ideas about the book, or your feelings and ideas about the book. They are probably all a little crazy themselves, because otherwise who would choose this life? Writers can be terrible, or at least deeply weird. We have many feelings. We are a passionate bunch. Sometimes that passion is useful, can be channeled into the work, but sometimes it’s less useful, like when you are worried about the book.

So this is me, talking about how I am worried about the book.

To be clear, I am not actually worried about the book. It’s more like a noise underneath everything I do lately, like the way some people can hear the earth hum and it drives them to absolute ruin. I am sending a copy of the book to my agent. Then we will meet with my new editor. I have another new editor. I know. From what I’ve heard from friends, it can be stressful to be orphaned more than once. I think it’ll be okay. For whatever reason, I’m not worried about this part in particular. I know the book is good, and will find readers. I just want it to be done already, or at least off my desk for a little while.

A lot of the writing, lately, is just ass-in-chair, making words, trying to figure out how to shape the last third of the book. Or maybe the first third of the book. I keep rearranging things, trying to figure out how the pieces fit together. I have a separate word doc full of things that might fit, but haven’t inserted, or else have excised from this version. I think that I am close, because I am getting sick of the book. Once it is horrible, and I can’t look at it anymore, I will send it to my agent. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in two weeks at the latest. Ori says I should send it by the fifteenth, which is probably true. The fifteenth sounds like a good day to send a book to someone. It’s hard to say, exactly, when you get sick enough of your book you can’t look at it anymore. People who are in creative spaces know what this is like: if you write a book and you get to the point where it is horrible, you send it. If you think you might ruin the book, or the art that you’re making, you ship it. For a while, last year, I kept holding on to a cup and refiring it, thinking that the refiring process would help make it exactly right. It didn’t. Mostly I just warped the cup with each turn in the kiln. I distorted the glaze effects I hoped to achieve, traded old problems for new ones (pinholes appeared in my repeatedly glazed cup). Editing is not really something you can do with cups, I think. The work is too fragile, too weird. I keep trying, though.

Happy new year. May we find what we need this year.