Inside View

A day in the life is, for me at least, like life for any other stay-at-home mom. I get the kids out the door for school, get laundry in the washer, tidy up the kitchen, make a few calls, and then I try to get to work. I run in one hour blocks, with half an hour off in between to take care of housework, food, and the most important thing: coffee.

When Hub and the boys get home, I'm SuperMom once again - we do homework, make dinner, clean up, and do bedtime.

Evenings, I either crit for friends, edit for the epublisher I work for, or try to get some more wordcount in before I sleep.

Once the book is done, I tend to send an exhausted email to my critique partners, who then read it for me, reassure me that I'm a good writer before telling me all the places I've messed up, and all the work I need to do to make what I've written into something that other people could/should read.

Then there's a week or two period where I decide which suggestions work for the story, which ones I can make, and how to address everything that needs to be fixed. Once that's done, I send the story back out again for another readthrough before subbing it to a publisher, agents, wherever that book is going. (and deciding which is which? That's a whole process in itself!)

Then it's a matter of waiting. And pretending you're not.
I hate waiting. I'm not good at it. I'm one of those people who, when they're in line, can't read a book or play a game or anything else. Because I'm already doing something. I'm waiting. So this part is pretty much agony.

Eventually, you get word back - in my case, for my first book, an R&R which said I'd done lots right, but my ending was weak. (it was, I admit it.) So, I changed it, sent it back in and...waited.

Fortunately, my editor had been waiting for me, too, and sent me a contract offer rather quickly.

Then edits. I'm not going to linger on that process. It requires a lot of chocolate, coffee, and reassurance that I don't suck. Somewhere in that process...I get to see cover art, which is when the whole thing starts to feel like a real book. (My covers were created by the FABULOUS Anne Cain. They're amazing, and I'm so lucky to have them.) Then the wait until the proof is approved by management, at which point I can finally share the image with people.

And then more waiting until the book, now finished edits and on its way through formatting, is released into the wilds. Waiting for the first review...

Writing involves a lot of waiting. Most of it the on pins and needles kind.

Have I mentioned I'm really bad at waiting?!