Feast or famine
I've probably mentioned it before, but the one thing about the writing business that really irks me is the "Feast or Famine" way things seem to work out. Earlier this summer, my calender was an empty desolate wasteland where writing projects dared not rear their heads.
But in August the dam broke and I've been riding this strange wave ever since.
I finished a book in November but am awaiting rewrites from my publisher that I'll have to do. He's swamped with the Christmas season, which has left me on pins and needles. I so badly want to see my name on the spine of a book soon. Last time I talked with him he was saying Spring or Summer. But his company is notorious for running behind, so I'm cautiously optimistic for fall or winter 2007. Well, a lot of that is allegedly due to the authors running behind, but I got him a full manuscript that's not only ready to go but professionally proofread and edited as well (rae is a proofreader at the same financial company I work for and took hours to read through every page). Clean, good copy in about three months. Right at the deadline he asked for. He wants some changes, but that's to be expected. It's the first time we've worked together. The faster he gets them to me, the faster I can see my name on a shelf.
He must have liked it to some degree because he gave me the go-ahead to start working on a second book with another writer. So I've started on that book this month.
On top of that, an old friend of mine who is an artist for an art studio reconnected with me. The studio wants he and I to resurrect an old comic book idea we had. They want some script and pages to look at in a few weeks. The artist has reimagined the project and I've had a couple hundred pages of back story and character profiles to read through....written by an artist who, bless his heart, has great ideas but is not a writer. Fortunately, he's a kick ass artist.
On top of that I've got a smaller project from the same studio that's a collaboration of writer's and artists for a periodical that's put out by the publisher I did the first book for. So that's four concurrent writing projects going at the same time.
This is, of course, on top of a 40-hour a week job editing financial statements for one the top 20 largest accounting firms in the country, which decided to make this month the month they switched over to an entirely new, paperless, document system.
Oh, and as if that weren't bad enough, a friend turned rae and I onto World of Warcraft.
Sleep? What's that?
But in August the dam broke and I've been riding this strange wave ever since.
I finished a book in November but am awaiting rewrites from my publisher that I'll have to do. He's swamped with the Christmas season, which has left me on pins and needles. I so badly want to see my name on the spine of a book soon. Last time I talked with him he was saying Spring or Summer. But his company is notorious for running behind, so I'm cautiously optimistic for fall or winter 2007. Well, a lot of that is allegedly due to the authors running behind, but I got him a full manuscript that's not only ready to go but professionally proofread and edited as well (rae is a proofreader at the same financial company I work for and took hours to read through every page). Clean, good copy in about three months. Right at the deadline he asked for. He wants some changes, but that's to be expected. It's the first time we've worked together. The faster he gets them to me, the faster I can see my name on a shelf.
He must have liked it to some degree because he gave me the go-ahead to start working on a second book with another writer. So I've started on that book this month.
On top of that, an old friend of mine who is an artist for an art studio reconnected with me. The studio wants he and I to resurrect an old comic book idea we had. They want some script and pages to look at in a few weeks. The artist has reimagined the project and I've had a couple hundred pages of back story and character profiles to read through....written by an artist who, bless his heart, has great ideas but is not a writer. Fortunately, he's a kick ass artist.
On top of that I've got a smaller project from the same studio that's a collaboration of writer's and artists for a periodical that's put out by the publisher I did the first book for. So that's four concurrent writing projects going at the same time.
This is, of course, on top of a 40-hour a week job editing financial statements for one the top 20 largest accounting firms in the country, which decided to make this month the month they switched over to an entirely new, paperless, document system.
Oh, and as if that weren't bad enough, a friend turned rae and I onto World of Warcraft.
Sleep? What's that?
posted by Dark Lord at 8:56 AM
2 Comments:
lol...he's not a writer ,eh?
..and warcraft. aw man, i've heard the horror stories about that one.
good luck.
Let me say it now, my copy of your book will have the genuine scribble in it, on that faraway date it sees publication.
Post a Comment
<< Home