Havoc, various and extreme
My editor’s assistant is very on the spot, bless her, and while the copyedited ms of PEGASUS in all its red-pencilled, Post-Itted glory* isn’t due to arrive till Thursday**, she sent me the copyeditor’s queries last night so I can at least get started on the more or less substantive stuff, as opposed to the melting-down-over-the-question-of-semicolons stuff, which will have to await arrival of the large square boulder of typescript. Or printerscript.
I am, of course, hyperventilating.*** Deadlines crunch underfoot like the ice that I hope is not out there forming after yesterday’s rain and today’s temperature plunge. Anxiety, foreboding and self-doubt fleet gibbering past like wraiths. And I have a headache that feels like being thwacked repeatedly by the Chrysler Building †. And I may be getting a job tomorrow at the recycling plant, sorting plastic bottles and cardboard boxes. Or old computer components. I’m not fussy.
And I haven’t even told you yet about the latest edition of SUNSHINE which they’re shoving through in some kind of inside-out Douglas-Adams timeframe†† to take advantage of some opportunity for a special promotion last week or something, and they sent me the cover roughs today which there is no time to do much about except keep going and I recognise that they are hip and flash and attention-catching and even pretty on their own terms but I can’t even breathe this fast††† let alone make decisions and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING.
* * *
OKAY. IT’S OFFICIAL. FEDEX HAS SCREWED UP, AND I’M NOT GETTING PEGASUS ON THURSDAY.
KILL ME. KILL ME NOW.
* * *
* Yup. Hard copy. I’m old and feeble and retro and sad.^ Most of this publishing doodah happens electronically these days, except among those of us who are old and feeble and retro and sad. We agreed to deal with the copyedited FIRE electronically, and it frelling near killed me.^^ Probably a great many of my mysterious aches and pains have nothing to do with hellhounds, large heavy potted plants, boxes of books, or cranky bells, but are the result of those pins various publishing people are sticking in wax figures labelled ‘Robin’. She gets her damn book in four months late and she wants the copyedit in HARD COPY? What did I do with those hat pins?
^ And I compulsively reread Calvin and Hobbes. When I get to the bottom of the pile+ I start over. Aside from the astonishingly high level of inspired lunacy Watterson maintained, I like the way Calvin’s parents sit around reading books. I read a strip today where Calvin’s mom is using a typewriter. The copyright date is 1987—that’s only twenty-three years ago! The usual date of the invention of the world-wide web is 1989, isn’t it? And PCs (and Macs) as more than a geek phenomenon are only about ten years older than that. I know, I know, the world does keep changing, but this is the first time I’ve been old, and I think the electronic revolution is pretty amazing.
Robin McKinley is on Twitter? Robin McKinley who was given a phone machine as a house-warming present back in Maine because her nearest and dearest were sure that after she and her phone-answering housemates went their separate ways they would never hear from her again?
I’ve been trying to find that joke about the bathtub and the phone: The bathtub was invented in 1850 and the telephone in 1875.++ This means you could sit in the tub for twenty-five years before the phone rang.
If you turned the phone off, you could sit in the tub for 125 years before your email pinged. You’d be pretty wrinkly by then though.
+ Of course I have them all. I am a card-carrying obsessive. You know this.
++ Except that the bathtub was invented either by the Romans in BCE quack quack something, or by Thingummy in 1883 who came up with the trick of enamelling of a large iron basin, and the phone really was invented in 1875 or thereabouts. Never mind. I still like the joke.
^^ Sheer chronological age is not necessarily the determining factor. Peter coped. I didn’t. And he can remember twenty five more internetless years than I can.
** IT HAD BETTER BE GOING TO ARRIVE ON THURSDAY. I’VE ONLY GOT TILL NEXT THURSDAY TO TURN IT AROUND. AS I SIT HERE, TWITCHING EVERY TIME MY EMAIL PINGS^, THE MS. HAS NOT YET ARRIVED AT MY PUBLISHER, WHICH MEANS MY PUBLISHER HAS NOT YET SENT IT OUT.
It’s bad enough that sodding Fedex delivers when they feel like it, so while they guarantee 48 hours, they don’t tell you which end of the forty-eight, so to speak, so Peter is going to house-sit while I’m hurtling hellhounds. On Thursday. If it’s Thursday. It’s looking bad for Thursday. OH. GODS.
^Fortunately I am not sitting in the bath. It occurs to me that the real reason I find myself incapable of going to bed at a decent, civilised hour, is because I like to lie in the bath and read. At mmmph o’clock in the morning the phone very rarely rings.+
+ Although Peter scared me silly ringing at 11:15 from Elsewhereshire this weekend. Eleven-fifteen is, of course, the mere shank of the evening by my standards, but anyone who rings me after about 9 pm~ earns my undying opprobrium. (I’m still not a big fan of the telephone.) Ordinarily I would make an exception for Peter, but what was he doing in Elsewhereshire this weekend when he should have been at home bringing me cups of strong hot stomach-quelling tea and frosted flutes of medicinal champagne?
~ Or before about . . . never mind.
*** The funny thing is that today is pretty much the first day that PEG II has not felt like a Giant Spiky Monster which is going to roll over me juggernaut-fashion and leave me a little blot on the carpet^, but a story I might conceivably manage to tell.^^ The last two or three weeks or whatever it’s been it’s been like, No! Go away! I’ve done all that! What do you mean it’s not finished! Of course it’s finished! I know when I’ve finished a novel! Sequel! I don’t frelling do sequels, and if you say that again I will make you eat my desktop!^^^
^ To go with various other recent blots on the carpet. What a good thing we go in for patterned carpets.
^^ I say nothing about finishing it by next autumn.
^^^Which is the computer whose email is still not working.
† Point down, of course. This is all part of the Giant Spiky Monster metaphor.
†† “Oh no, not again.”
††† Especially when I’m hyperventilating
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