Monday, December 14, 2009

Why did you eat the Flan?

Tomorrow I begin what I fondly call: 'the dreaded edit'.

I took one month off from the novel and spent my time being French for a week, then eating a lot of cheese, going to spin class and watching people die on Grey's Anatomy. It's been fun!

But now it's time to get back into the weeds and follow all of Tim Gunn's marvelous advice to 'make it work' so I don't get 'auf'ed by a tall, blond, literary agent wearing lederhosen. (Wait. What?)

Problem is, I don't exactly know what I'm doing and it's making me slightly nauseous. I just opened the document for the first time in 30 days and I literally wanted to puke. (I'm sure this has nothing to do with the 5 pounds of chorizo I just consumed at our office holiday lunch.)

A lot of things started running through my head:

Melissa! You don't even have real chapters! (I write scene by scene and I don't know how to slap numbers on them.)

Melissa! You don't even have a title! (Seriously, I can't even think of one. Can you pitch a book called 'Untitled'?)

Melissa! One of your characters has supposedly been dead for 20 years and he's in the first 3 alleged 'chapters' of your book. (I'm sorry! I didn't even know he was dead until 250 pages in.)

I could go on. But I won't. Because I've already started speaking back and forth to myself in 3rd person and it's only going to get worse from there.

Melissa! Why did you eat that flan today at lunch?! (I don't know. I just don't know.)

1 comment: