Janice MacDonald's Blog: Notes on writing - Posts Tagged "new-book"

I have one weekend to go. I intend to get in the car with my husband, drive out of town to our friends' house for a relaxing evening of good food, wine and board games. We may play a bit of music together. I know we'll laugh a lot. And I will enjoy every minute. And boy, will I need it.

Because next week, I am getting my manuscript back from my editor. It will be accompanied by about 24 pages of close, single-spaced notes. They will be prefaced with a paragraph telling me how much she enjoyed the story. Because she is a very nice person, she has in fact already written me two short emails to that effect.

It's what comes after that paragraph that will take a whole lot of energy to get through, and then a whole lot of work to deal with. Because it is never much fun dealing with critiques of your work — even critiques meant to make your work the best it can be. I am and have always been a carrot responder. Sticks hurt my feelings and leave me feeling completely deflated.

However, I will read through all of her notes, and I will set my alarm to ungodly-thirty A.M. each Friday night, and I will resign my weekends for the foreseeable future to rewrites and nail-biting and swearing under my breath. I will work my way through all 24 pages, shifting and changing the words I sweated over, moving situations and plot lines about and even cutting the occasional beloved character. I will also craft tortured paragraphs of justification for every phrase I cannot bear to lose, worrying that it won't be enough of an argument to sway my editor, who will have grown to resemble Grendel's mother in my mind's eye (she's actually a very attractive young woman with shiny hair and great shoulders).

The book, which my publisher paid me an advance on, and liked so much that he entrusted it to a gifted, qualified, expensive editor, will at various points in these next few weeks seem like both the best thing I have ever written and the worst pile of verbiage anyone scraped off their shoe. I will wonder why it is I ever thought I could write. I will cry a bit and be an enormous irritant to my husband. I will be distracted while commuting. I may burn dinner.

I will also dance about a bit when I laugh anew at the funny bits I cannot wait for people to read, I'll thrill to the exciting bits that pop, and I will thank my editor for making the suggestions I needed to tighten, to tauten, to clear away the dross. (What little there was, of course.)

And I will be so happy when spring arrives and the books come off the press and I hold one in my hand and whisper, "Thank you, Sharon."

There is very little glamour in writing a book, if you happen to be me. I drag myself out of bed on weekend mornings at 5:30 a.m. Dressed in comfy pants, a cozy sweater and fuzzy socks, I brew a pot of French Market Chicory Coffee (thank you Ron and Jeff!) and curl up in one of the chairs in our living room to knock out five pages minimum. When I eventually have a decent draft to send off to my editor, she and I volley it back and forth (she's in Winnipeg, so I end up face-to-face with her maybe once every couple of years) and at long last I'll see cover art and page proofs, while rising to knock out five pages on the next manuscript.

In between, my husband updates the website, my friends meet for lunch to commiserate about our compulsion to pursue writing careers, and I buy other people's books, read about other people's books in glossy magazines and listen to national broadcasters gush about other people's books. Oh yes, and I clock in at my day job, which is challenging, stimulating, and filled with wonderful colleagues. Which is a good thing, eh?

But every once in a while, the magic happens.

And last night on June 15th, at the Rutherford House Provincial Historic Site, I felt like a princess. The new book, Condemned to Repeat: A Randy Craig Mystery, was piled up in a glorious display on the Rutherfords' shiny dining table, people I love and respect kept piling in through the door, and party food and drink was laid out in the tea room. The new book begins at Rutherford House, with a mystery dinner theatre event based on a magicians' reunion, so our friend Stephen Dafoe (who in an earlier incarnation had been a touring professional magician) whipped up a short magic act to entertain after my reading. After the entertainment, I signed books at Premier Alexander Rutherford's desk... it was all very heady.

Kelly Hewson, my best friend from grad school, drove up from Calgary to help us celebrate. All my friends from work were there. People I admire, who have shaped me into who I am, were there in droves: Tom Peacocke, Jim de Felice, Margaret Van de Pitte, Nancy Gibson and John Whittaker, and many more. Family like Randy Williams, Larry Reese, Ruth Kindree and Jossie Mant were on hand. And friends! Stalwart pals through thick and thin showed up to share in the celebration.

Sharon and Steve Budnarchuk, who own Audreys Books and have been so supportive over the years, managed the sales and food. Sharon Caseburg, my darling editor, spent time and energy conspiring with Olga Fowler of Rutherford House Provincial Historic Site to put the whole event together. Masani St. Rose-Toth and her husband Justin provided glorious fruity iced tea.

Also, excitingly, several fans of the series I didn't know till last night were there and introduced themselves to me. There were more than sixty people there, and various people who couldn’t make it sent lovely notes and promises of lunch dates ahead. I wore splendid red shoes and shiny red nail polish and my new Simon Chang dress and was toasted and feted and awash in good cheer. I could hardly sleep last night, reliving and reverberating.

And this morning, I rolled out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to work on the next manuscript. It's okay, it's what I do. Another few thousand words, another few drafts, another few revisions, some more solitary Saturday and Sunday mornings, and there'll be another marvelous party.