You’re probably wondering why my posts have been a bit more sporadic than usual over the last few weeks.
Okay, in my ego-driven imagination, you’re wondering why my posts have been a bit more sporadic than usual over the last few weeks. In reality, you probably haven’t noticed. And there’s a pretty good chance that, even if you have, you don’t care.
Leave me to my delusions, darn you!
Now, where was I? Oh yes.
You’re probably wondering blah blah blah last few weeks.
There is a reason — a reason I like to think of as A Good Reason, in fact.
My creative brain is locked inside a little room with the novel I’ve been working on for… well, almost as long as I’ve been blogging, (two years in April) and I’m finding it hard to write these little snippets of my life on as regular a basis.
Because…
I’VE NEARLY FINISHED!
Okay, the celebration may be a little premature. But not much. I’ve got about 8000 words left to write, and then I’ll be finished the first draft. And the last bit is, of course, the best bit. The high tension, high excitement, do-or-die, winner-takes-all, good-vs-bad, stand-off between the protagonist and the antagonist. It takes all my willpower to draw my mind out of my story for long enough to remember that my children need to be fed, let alone to remember to blog.
So, I’m sorry.
But not that sorry. Because this has been a long time coming, and I’m looking forward to finishing the first draft and starting on the long, and much-anticipated Road of Revision.
So I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has supported me while I’ve been writing. Thanks to my blogging friends and the great community I’ve found here and elsewhere on the web. Thanks to my family and friends. Thanks to my writing partner, Claire, who has provided inspiration and pep talks when needed (as well as a bottle of wine to open when my draft is complete!). And thanks most of all to my husband, Robbie, who has supported, encouraged, and believed in my writing and this story all along.
When I told Robbie I wanted to celebrate the completion of the first draft by purchasing a book that will give me extra insight into my setting and help me with my revisions, he said, “That’s not a treat, that’s a necessary tool you need for your career. You should get a massage or something.”
Thanks, Rob, for your support. And also for using the word “career” instead of “crazy, impossible dream”.
So if there’s a few days in between my posts, now you know why. I promise I’ll be back full-time when I type ‘The End’.
Who is your biggest fan and supporter?
Jo Eberhardt is a writer of speculative fiction, mother to two adorable boys, and lover of words and stories.
Congratulations on the pending completion of draft #1!!
And kudos to your husband for his support and realizing that craft books are tools and massages are celebratory prizes!
Thanks, Cheryl! I’m pretty excited — and so eager to get into revision at this point! And I count myself very fortunate to have a husband who understands these things.
Unsuprisingly – or possibly not given the media focus on the ubiquity of divorce – my biggest supporter is my wife.
Lovely to hear.
My wonderful lady, “crazy, impossible dream” infers something that will most likely never come to pass (the word “impossible” is the clue. Who says I don’t know word….stuff…). I have never, ever doubted that one day we will bask in the wonderment of your finished work(s).
You will always have my support. Always. I love you and I’m so very proud of what you’re creating.
Thank you, my sweet.
Awww – Robbie’s comment is the BEST! What a beautiful, supportive hubby he is
Congratulations on the pending completion
One day I’ll be sitting back reading your best-seller and bragging ‘I know the author!’ 
Haha. I hope so, Dianne.
I can’t wait to buy it and mail it to you for you to sign it. Yay!!!!! You know even though Hot Joe doesn’t read all of my posts he’s still my biggest fan and supporter. Actually, I think he doesn’t read it and then I’ll see a Like from him on Facebook. Silly man.
I will sign it with glee.
I love seeing Hot Joe’s comments on your posts. He’s such a sweetie.
Well, *I* had noticed the postings were getting a little sparse… glad it’s good news instead of bad. Congrats!
For biggest supporter, I suppose I’m supposed to say my wife, but the reality is that it’s probably my friend Rose.
The important thing is that you’ve got a number one supporter.
And thanks for noticing!
Congratulations!! I can’t wait to read your book.
And yes, kudos to Robbie for the perfect response.
Yeah, he’s a bit awesome that way.
I can’t wait for you to read my book, either. (Although I get all nervy thinking about it, just in case you hate it. Crazy, huh?)
I won’t. I’ll love it, just like I love you! (But not in a creepy way. Well…I might love the book in a creepy way, sometimes that happens. But I don’t love you in a creepy way.)
<3
Home stretch! Congrats on the forthcoming complete first manuscript of your novel– cue the cake and confetti!!!
I’m on that long, much-anticipated Road of Revision myself right now. It is still work, and a good deal of it, but much easier (in the sense that “it’s easier to edit crap than nothing”) and more rewarding than fleshing out the first draft. Because believe me– when you finally have a complete draft and get around to editing it, there will be portions that are not only not crap, but pretty darn good.
Cheers and all the best in your progression with it!
Thanks so much, Julie. I’ve been looking forward to revisions for quite a while now. The hardest part will be putting it aside and not working on it for a while! Fortunately, I’ve got a back-up project ready to go so I can keep up the writing momentum.
Wooooo hooooo!! Go Jo! Go Jo! Congrats!
Thanks ye.
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Truth be told… I don’t have any fans. (I hope I can add: “yet”.) My wife is probably my main supporter: she does her best make it possible for me to schedule writing time, when it’s realistic and other demands aren’t consuming our lives. And she reads the first drafts of almost everything I write. But I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to say she’s a “fan”.
And… well… If I’m honest, Dear Wife is not currently in a place where she can use the word “career” when she talks about my writing. Truth-be-told, neither can I. (Again, I hope I can say “yet”.) I want it to be a career, but right now I don’t have the time to devote to it as if it were. Instead, it lies somewhere on the continuum between “hobby” and “breathing air”.
That’s a pretty big continuum there.
It’s hard, especially when you’ve got very young children. I’m certainly very aware of that. And I can assure you that it’s not easier to be the stay at home type. (I swear I had more free time when I was a working Mum!) But things change over time. I think the important thing is to be regularly reassessing how you’re using your time, and whether you’re using it in the best ways possible to achieve your goals. If you are, kudos to you, not matter how much time you have for your air-breathing hobby.
That’s a hard assessment to make. I was planning on blogging a little about the specifics of my current time-based challenges sometime next week, after my regular weekly progress update.
In about November last year, my husband underwent a little experiment with ourselves. For one full week, we recorded exactly how we spent our time. We had spreadsheets divided into columns for all our usual activities (Day Job, Sleeping, Eating, Grooming, Spouse, TV, Computer Games, Reading, Writing, Housework, Caring for Children, Playing with Children, etc etc) and as we finished doing one thing and moved to another, we’d jot down how long we spent doing that activity. It was really enlightening (although damn annoying to keep track of every day!). Before we started, we each wrote down our estimates of what our weekly hours on each activity would look like. Then we put those away until the end of the week. It was really interesting to find that our perceptions of how we spent our time actually varied considerably from what we really did — and also to note how much time was “unaccounted for”. Some of the unaccounted time was clearly just time spent moving from one activity to the next, but a lot of it was time that just…. vanished. Doing that exercise really helped us make the decision to each have an hour’s creative time in the evening. Because looking at it over a week, 7 hours out of the 168 available ones doesn’t seem like such a big deal — especially when you can see in black and white which activity it can be removed from.
That’s a great time study. And I think I might be able to get there in the future. Just not in the immediate future. Things are just extra-complicated right now. But if I could even squeeze out 20 minutes a day, much less an hour, I think that would be a huge boon to my writing productivity.