Joely Sue Burkhart

I’m feeling a bit scatter-brained this month, this week.  The revisions to Letters still aren’t finished.  I’ve written about 5K on Gregar’s book, which is good, but not as much as I wanted.  Now I’m switching gears entirely to prep Beautiful Death for editor revisions. 

Why?  Well, you see, I had this small hatred of “had” for a long time, which Deena has patiently pointed out to me through the past 3 books.  BD was written back in 2005/2006, so to say that I’ve learned a thing or two in the past years is an understatement.  No sense in the editor wasting a ton of time fixing something I already know needs to be fixed.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Beautiful Death after being gone from it so long.  It’s my rebellion child.  It dragged me kicking and screaming to Olympus, just as Isabella and Hades both were betrayed and taken to face Zeus in the end.  I had to get MAD to finish it.  Mad at myself, mad at the world.  In the end, I loved this book, because it helped me finish.  If I hadn’t finished…  If I’d quit a book again…

I really don’t know that I’d be here now.

So in many ways, BD saved me as a writer.  It was my answer in the darkest moment of my journey to-date.  So far, revising it has been like seeing an old acquaintance to whom a great debt is owed, and I’m feeling a little awkward and unsure how I can help it when it helped me so much.  I’m starting with those “hads.”  We’ll see what else needs gentle smoothing.

We had a horrid personal squick day yesterday with Littlest Monster.  Let me just say that I’m still washing everything in the house and I seriously contemplated dragging out all the beds and furniture and just torching it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 5:24 am and is filed under Writing, Monster Tales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.