Thoughts on some Future or other
I forgot it’s the second Monday tomorrow. AAAAUGH. Old Eden monthly tower practise tomorrow. AAAAAUGH.
I hobbled up the bell tower ladder this morning feeling fragile . . . as your head comes through the trap door in the floor you are confronted by the blackboard. Today it said Old Eden practise 12 October 7:30 ALL WELCOME. Vicky doesn’t go in for roundabout methods—tower secretaries don’t have time for subtlety*—but it did cross my mind to wonder if this was, as well as a general announcement, a friendly cue to the person who usually phones round the second Sunday afternoon** reminding potential ringers of the treat available for their delectation the next day. I am presently barely speaking in complete sentences, and I don’t do well with phone machines even when I’m at my most articulate. . . . And I think Vicky was braced for me to say I was Too Tired.*** But . . . naaah. I have merely left an assortment of phone machine messages so bizarre that their recipients will not only not come tomorrow, they will decide that Old Eden and that mad American woman are best avoided.†
The good news is that handbells with Titus isn’t till Monday week . . . not tomorrow, but the Monday after. Except that I’d salved my conscience on this one saying to myself that Monday-tomorrow is a holiday in New York, I can give myself one more day of long restorative†† weekend. By next Monday I will be hipdeep in PEGASUS again.
I am heavily preoccupied with what my editor is going to say. Well, of course I’m heavily preoccupied with what my editor is going to say. I’m at least as weird as your average author. But usually Waiting to Hear is fairly straightforward—you want her to say, Yes! I love it! Here’s your money! ††† But in this case . . . if she says Yes! I love it as it is! We’re going to push it through for autumn ’10! . . . I am back at the rockface I was only pried off of and lowered to ground level from last Thursday, because there is still work to be done. Whatever happens next, I’m not done, capiche?‡ What I don’t know is only how much work there is. Whatever my editor says, I’m picking it up again next week. So if she says, no, sorry, there’s more work left than you can do in a few weeks‡‡, we’ll let it slip a season and see how you’re getting on . . . at least I can slow down.
But what I don’t get is paid.‡‡‡
But it’s worse than that. If that were all I’d clearly be hoping that she did say that they were going to have it out there next autumn. I can survive a few more weeks like the last few weeks. (I think.) But . . . if we cram PEG I through for autumn ’10 . . . I will feel morally obliged to have a crack at getting PEG II in for autumn ’11—which was the plan, you know, six months ago when I chopped it into two books. Which would mean having that manuscript in . . . the end of next summer, which would (undoubtedly) have to be extended (again . . . all this madness began with cramming a late DRAGONHAVEN through for the following autumn, how many centuries ago was that?) to some time around now . . . and I’m already exhausted§, not to mention not even done yet with PEG I.
Which means not only won’t I get PEG II done in time, but I also get to be a failure. §§
I think I’ll retrain as a florist.
* * *
* I am not joking. I told you about Friday’s wedding, for which we had something like eight days’ warning that bells were desired. And ringers are notoriously a cat-herding situation.
** Ask me why I know ringers present a cat-herding situation.
*** I missed tower practise. I am clearly at death’s door.
† Poor Vicky. Her tower must be really ailing.
†† . . . I’m still waiting
††† This never happens. When you’re lucky they say, Yes! I love it! —And then your hard-working agent, who, after all, earns her living on her percentage of you, starts badgering the finance department, who are always in Tortuga playing canasta and not returning their phone calls.
‡ And unfortunately the Total Loss of Faith from last Wednesday night is still hanging around in an ugly and vengeful manner.^ Do I need to tell you again that you really don’t want to be a free lance Creative Person? Keep the day job. We FLCPs do moderation so badly. Although I admit I may be an extreme case.
^ I’m used to this. It happens with every book.+ It’s still not a fun time.
+ Yes! Even with [insert name of favourite McKinley book here]!
‡‡ Remember that it takes a year to get a book through the publishing process, some of it because people are stupid and machinery breaks down and software is possessed by demons . . . but also because a lot of stuff really does need grotesque amounts of lead-in: the sales force is chatted up now on what they’re going to be selling next spring for bookstores to be ordered for next autumn. It sounds insane but given the size of the operation it’s not surprising. ^ Stupidity, breakdowns and demons are the minor end.
Mind you, I won’t be surprised if in another fifteen or fifty years publishing has changed so much this system is no longer recognisable^^. A lot of the lead time at present has to do with the physical facts of creating the objects that are books, for example. I happen to be one of those^^^ who thinks That Books As We Know Them are not going to be expunged from our lives and overflowing bookshelves. I know quite young people who like to read in the bath. But book production is on to be revolutionised. ^^^^
^ How fast would you want to swot up on, oh, say, forty books, well enough to sell each individually to everyone on your client list?
^^ We used to do what?
^^^ . . . old fogies on our way out
^^^^ I’m actually surprised it is taking so long. But then I’m probably fantasising of a day when, for example, you sign off on something and no nice helpful person decides to change something to House Standard because . . . it’s House Standard. I even know this is a fantasy. It’ll just become some machine that does it instead.
And when there is some last-minute change BECAUSE NO ONE HAS BEEN PAYING ATTENTION and there’s a nice mindless gadget which can tirelessly examine every word. . . .That’s the moment the machinery breaks down.
‡‡‡ If it weren’t for Third House this would be less critical than you might assume. Due to menopause and having no metabolism left, I don’t eat^, and the hellhounds would prefer not to. That just leaves taxes, All Stars, and rosebushes.
^ Chocolate isn’t food. It appears in one of those confusing blank spaces in the periodic table that turn out to be full of quasars and other imaginary equation-balancers. It’s right next to champagne.
§ And have 1,000,000 bulbs and thirty rosebushes to plant.
§§ See second footnote, about keeping the day job and being an extreme case. I know the world would not end if PEG I came out autumn ’10 and PEG II did not come out in autumn ’11. I would still wear a scarlet ‘F’ on my shirtfront.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.