Unexpected Dry Rot

Um, yeah, so I'm not even going to try to explain what's kept me away from my blog for almost a year. Let's chalk it up to life. Yes, life was happening, and my blog wasn't a priority. I certainly thought about it from time to time, especially when I occasionally handed out business cards to acquaintances (and the thought was almost always, "oh no, they're going to go right to my blog and see how out of date it is!"), and I had some great blog topics in mind, but I never got so far as to actually write them. So, here I am, and without further ado, here's a new post. (Side note: as I typed the previous sentence, I suddenly had Rocky the Squirrel's voice in my head, saying, "And now here's something we hope you'll really like." Ah, how I miss watching Bullwinkle cartoons...)

Lately I've been diligently working on my YA manuscript. I'd been working on my MG manuscript for a long time, got it to where I thought it was ready to send out, queried a number of agents, got rejected by half, never heard from the other half, and got discouraged. I went back to work on my YA book for a while, was getting more consistently positive feedback on it than I had on the MG, so I decided to focus my efforts on the YA. (Meanwhile, my MG is sitting in a figurative drawer--my hard drive, actually--for the time being, but that's another story... Ha ha!) I was diligently writing chapters on schedule and handing them in to my critique group, then I was diligently making a list of edit notes, storyboarding, jotting down questions it occurred to me needed to be answered in certain places in the book, and then I was diligently revising.

Although it was getting harder to find time to devote to the book for various reasons, I was at least consistent in revising. It may not have been as much time as I would have liked, but I was making slow but steady progress on my edit notes list, so I was taking solace in that. Until today. This morning, I decided to take a look at the chronology of a certain plot thread. As I scrolled through the pages on my computer screen, only looking for where this storyline occurred, I came to the realization that the timeline of parts of the book, not just that plot thread, was out of whack. A character was talking about soccer practice when soccer season would probably be over already. The time elapsed between subsequent chapters would be one day, then suddenly three weeks between the next two. The deadline for a school project was suddenly extended for no other reason than I hadn't noticed that it should have happened already in the story.

Dread washed over me as I realized I have more work to do than I thought. I wanted to cry, pull my hair out, eat an entire container of Trader Joe's chocolate almond bark, but I knew none of those things would help me. In the end I'd have puffy eyes, bald spots, and a stomach ache, but my book still wouldn't be finished. Then an analogy popped into my head (that happens often, and I don't know if it's because I'm a writer or if it would happen even if I was a plumber). It's like my manuscript is a house. I knew when I sat down to revise that it was a fixer-upper. Maybe some cosmetic repairs, maybe having to redo the entire kitchen, but it was neither already in move-in condition, nor was it a tear-down. All I could do was make the repairs one at a time, and eventually it would be a great house. Then, as I knock a hole in a wall to make a repair, I discover dry rot. Suddenly this repair is going to be more major than I thought, and it's going to take more time. A setback, certainly, but all is not lost. I can console myself with the fact that it's better that I found it out now, while I'm making repairs anyway (as my critique partner said, better I discovered it myself before someone pointed it out to me). I just have to keep reminding myself that in the end, this is going to make for a more structurally sound, more beautiful house, and will hopefully get more bids once I put it on the market, even if that's now farther in the future than I was planning.

Now, back to work!