I suppose I ought to crank up the Fanfare Box. Why, yes. I do believe
that would be appropriate--some extra noise. Perhaps even confetti.
Streamers! And semi-naked dancing girls, and an open bar with a
strong-jawed tender! Because I have finished the first draft of The Book.
I haven't done that before. Not on this book, or any book at all. It is an entirely new-to-me thing, this thing that I have done! The dreaded 25,000 word mark? Passed. Fear of never finishing at all? Conquered. The manuscript currently weighs in at 75,139 words, a respectable heft.
I suppose, too, that I can now tell you my elevator pitch, first positing that the hypothetical elevator is going from one floor to another floor very quickly, because it's not really a full pitch. More like a movie pitch--such as, "It's Die Hard...with elves!" Call it The Enticement:
Needs work, you say?
Well, yes. The whole book still needs work. That's the trouble with this first draft business: yes, finishing it is a milestone I've never passed before, but it's by no means the end of the work. Now I'm into the nifty revision stage. I love revision. It's the polishing process: knocking off a bit of roughness here, working this piece up to a high sheen, reshaping that piece to give it just the right proportions, building unity and a sense of flow into the whole endeavor. It's probably my favorite part of the whole writing endeavor. I think it suits my non-linear nature, because it requires jumping from place to place in the narrative. You buff up one portion to a fine gloss, then realize that the shininess needs to be reflected in another, related portion earlier on, and so you take your soft cloth and rubbing compound over there and get to work. Very exciting. Much more exciting to me than the actual writing of the thing, which requires long solitary stretches of sitting in one place and doing one thing at a time until you pass out.
And that, my friends, is the big big news! There is other, even bigger news in the offing, but that particular piece of bigger news is also secret, and I shall tell it to you when the time is right.
1Oh, the pretension! No, I am not comparing myself to Vidal and Fitzgerald. I'm being flip, see.
I haven't done that before. Not on this book, or any book at all. It is an entirely new-to-me thing, this thing that I have done! The dreaded 25,000 word mark? Passed. Fear of never finishing at all? Conquered. The manuscript currently weighs in at 75,139 words, a respectable heft.
I suppose, too, that I can now tell you my elevator pitch, first positing that the hypothetical elevator is going from one floor to another floor very quickly, because it's not really a full pitch. More like a movie pitch--such as, "It's Die Hard...with elves!" Call it The Enticement:
Myra Breckinridge meets The Great Gatsby in a pre-Apocalyptic New York.1So there it is. Would you read that? I would, but that's because I wrote it.
Needs work, you say?
Well, yes. The whole book still needs work. That's the trouble with this first draft business: yes, finishing it is a milestone I've never passed before, but it's by no means the end of the work. Now I'm into the nifty revision stage. I love revision. It's the polishing process: knocking off a bit of roughness here, working this piece up to a high sheen, reshaping that piece to give it just the right proportions, building unity and a sense of flow into the whole endeavor. It's probably my favorite part of the whole writing endeavor. I think it suits my non-linear nature, because it requires jumping from place to place in the narrative. You buff up one portion to a fine gloss, then realize that the shininess needs to be reflected in another, related portion earlier on, and so you take your soft cloth and rubbing compound over there and get to work. Very exciting. Much more exciting to me than the actual writing of the thing, which requires long solitary stretches of sitting in one place and doing one thing at a time until you pass out.
And that, my friends, is the big big news! There is other, even bigger news in the offing, but that particular piece of bigger news is also secret, and I shall tell it to you when the time is right.
1Oh, the pretension! No, I am not comparing myself to Vidal and Fitzgerald. I'm being flip, see.
Congratulations! Also, envy. I HATE revisions. I am a first-draft kind of girl, all the way.
Aw, revision's where the magic happens!