Waiting and Hoping, Etc.

Dear readers and writers,

I've just sent off my novel, The Bad Project, for a cover-to-cover review, and I'm feeling tumultuous again.  This is the third time I've sent the text of one of my books to someone this way. I can't call what I feel anticipation or fear, it's a mixture of both.

It's the shoulder daemon, you see.  When he's in his editor phase, he tells me so clearly that I cannot write beautiful prose, that it's full of errors, that it stumbles when it should fly.  But when he is in his writer phase, he can't wait to see what the characters can do any more than I can, and he tells me how fascinating they are, and how well the things they do reveal their deeper selves.  And even how well I've written about them at times.  There's no way I can tell which phase has the upper hand on the truth.  But an outsider, a knowledgeable reader, my reviewer'll know for sure.

So, I throw salt over my shoulder, cross my eyes at the evening star, cross my fingers, eschew my husband's lucky number (13), etc and feel on edge.  It's not reasonable that the ms has even arrived and I'm already nervous.  No one can read it as fast as I'd like this to be over.  I tell myself to calm down, breathe deeply.  I rub my feet with hand cream.  I stretch.  I answer old emails that I've almost forgotten about.  Is it still the same day?  Egads.

cheers,
Laura

Image: Comedy and Tragedy masks from mosaic at Hadrian's Villa, Creative Commons with thanks.

Book Release Feels Like Graduation, Wedding, BIG DAY

Hi friends,
I am surprised at how excited I feel about Monday, May 2, release day for Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling.  Since graduation at my college is right around the corner, and we just saw the royal wedding on TV, I feel it compares to those occasions for me, way back when.  It's funny how little I recall of my graduation day.  I cannot recall the speaker.  I know we wore black gowns and it was very hot.  I recall sitting down with my family and my senior thesis mentor, Ann Lacy, to chat after it was over.  Did I shake hands with President Otto Kraushaar?  Probably.  But I have no memory of that.   For my first wedding, I recall having cold feet right before the ceremony and having my dad calm me down.  I recall that the priest brought Marge Champion, a movie star, as his guest to the wedding.  I remember after the classical music on the tape, it switched to rock n roll via Roll Over Beethoven.  But that's all I remember.  What we said, what the priest said, that is all gone.  For my second wedding, I remember being worried that my nose would still need a cast, but it didn't.  I remember more about the ceremony because Mike and I wrote a lot of it.  I remember singing the Wedding Song and Morning Has Broken with Mike.  I remember a taped talk by Sister Julian Betts, Mike's education teacher from Bowie State.  I remember Katie hitting everyone in the nose with a very long-stemmed rose.  I remember Erin sleeping along the wall, and Jean pregnant with Susan.  I remember Lyle, spiffy in a suit.  And at the reception, I remember people watching the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament while we opened presents, and that Lyle got more presents than we did!  More for that one.  Maybe because it was more recent, although still many years ago.  But the Book Release has in common with all these the feeling of anticipation, the feeling of being on the edge of something that will change my life.  Here's hoping it changes for the better, for the better for women considering a career in science but unsure if it's compatible with a family.  Yes it is!