Feel free to disregard—I’m on a sleep-dep-fueled ramble of epic proportions* and I can’t promise entertainment value or even marginal coherency.
Okay, so I’ve always been a slash-and-burn reviser, but since December, when this particular rewrite commenced in earnest . . . well, let me just say that in the past three months, I’ve axed like I’ve never axed before.
At this point, I estimate that there are fewer than fifteen thousand original words remaining from what was once a 70k manuscript and is now a different 70k manuscript. I have pulled my hair, and stopped brushing my hair, and gone running a lot, and once I cried when I heard a Jimmy Eat World song on the radio. On these grounds, I could probably be institutionalized.
I have deleted scenes I hated, and scenes that I liked, and even one that I loved, but this is okay, because the book that existed before was sloppy and pedestrian. This new book will be much better. It has to be. It owes me.
Number One Triumph: Since Valentine’s Day, I have written twenty (say it with me, people) TWENTY THOUSAND new words. Not first-draft words, but the RIGHT words. Or at least, okay ones. This is not counting the words that I’ve written and subsequently deleted. There were many. This rewrite is going down. I am killing it like an expletive modified by some other expletive.
More evidence that D is awesome: I waylay him in the kitchen in order to apologize for behaving like an extraterrestrial for the past week, and then go one further, apologizing preemptively for any increasing irrationality, irritability or other weirdness that may yet occur as a result of foregoing sleep and basically all forms of real-life contact.
He says, and I quote, “So, you’re saying there’s going to be pie.”
Me: “Were you listening to me?”
Him: “Yeah, I heard you say that I’d be getting pie. When you stop sleeping, you bake a lot.”
I am tragically predictable. I am married to someone who totally gets me.
Lesson for life (self,write this down): Rewriting a book that you’ve already written is sometimes way, way harder than writing a book that is different.
*ETA: less than epic ramble. But totally ramble-y nonetheless. I do not disappoint.
Brenna Yovanoff 
*laughs and laughs*
I’m glad D. is being so great about this. I expect to be in exactly the same position you are about a year from now, when I’m doing the final revisions on the diss.
Remember that sleep IS a good plan, at least occasionally, and don’t forget to eat.
I’m glad D. is being so great about this.
Well, you have to remember, he’s had all that grad school practice–I swear it’s the test of any relationship :D
I really think the late nights are just a personal quirk at this point. I get ramped-up on something, and the need to sleep vanishes (but oh. yes. it does. come. back.) And since I do have some judgment left and realize that it’s inadvisable to write 24 hours a day, I fill all that excess time with other activities.
Case in point: remember that time when I got tired of working on my final paper for our Austen class and thought it would be a good idea to dye my hair brown? Ideas always shine more brilliantly at night . . .
LOL. Mmmmm, pie.
I can’t wait to see the new words!
Hahaha–I can’t make any promises about their actual quality, but late at night, they are shiny, shiny, shiny!
Go you :D
And that conversation with your husband is adorable and hilarious.
Thanks! I get a kick out of him :D
Every now then, of course, there’s still that residual adolescent thing where I get all angsty and like, “You don’t know me!” And then I realize, “Oh, wait . . . he knows me.”
Everything’s better with pie. :)
I’m in super awe of you–20k in 12 days? WOW. Way to go!!!
I’m in super awe of you–20k in 12 days?
Thanks! That’s actually kind of what prompted me to post. I spent all this time angsting about how I wasn’t getting enough done, I was moving so slow, I should have had this thing in a month ago, etc. Then last night, I actually ran a word-count and was like, What the–? Holy hell!
And then I felt much better.
That’s amazing work, Miss Brenna!
Why, thank you!
Truth in advertising. And – THERE WILL BE PIE!
Everything is better with pie!
(that is a great and lamentably accurate icon)
I may not be getting a slice of that pie but I can’t wait to read the finished product!