WIP crack!

So, did everybody solve the Sunday Puzzle from yesterday's post? I did! In bed, late at night, though after I got the answers I did have to check the periodic table to be sure—I was a bit rusty with elemental abbreviations. I spent a lot of time assuming one of the solutions was Ireland / Iceland, but wouldn't you know it, there's no element with the initial R. Wasted some smug hope on Nigeria / Algeria as well.*

Can you tell there's not much point to today's post? Can you tell I'm procrastinating? Today is one of just a couple I have left to put the polish on Caught on Camera before it goes off to line edits. My super-sharp Blaze editor Laura Barth's revision notes are great and I think the characters are more real now because of her insights. It's amazing the stuff you overlook when you're busy writing the damn story. You forget that although the book is like a vivid movie playing in your head and you know everything about your character's past and motivations, the reader has to like, be told about all the stuff. But don't infodump! That is a damn narrow tightrope to walk.

Anyhow, today goes like this: make a French press of coffee (Trader Joe's French Roast decaf, which I'm convinced isn't especially decaffeinated—seems to make me just as punchy as the hard stuff), sit down on the couch with Padsy and my little bluetooth keyboard and plug through the final day of a three-day screen-read, doing all my niggly little rewordings and making sure the revisions' seams don't show. At some point I slog through the rain to the post office to mail my pen pal in New Zealand his woefully overdue birthday cookies and mix CD. Then home for more self-editing. If my brain's relatively anxiety-free, it could be a relaxing day—rain pitter-pattering on the skylight above my head, endless cups of coffee, NPR droning softly from the kitchen. If the brain forecast is anxious with a chance of distraction, add to that a lot of tugging on my hair and the temptation to escape the drudgery by checking in on Twitter every five minutes. Actually, if you see me on Twitter today, yell at me. Use all caps.

Okay, time to work. Enjoy your Mondays!

*Addendum / retraction: without giving too much away, I jumped to a false conclusion in this paragraph.