Editing and Allergies

It’s the middle of allergy season, or one of California’s several allergy seasons, at least, and I’ve been wheezing away this week.  On a normal day, I only dose up on non-drowsy stuff in the morning, but this week, it’s involved two doses in the day and a heavy bit of Benadryl to make it through the night.  And that means I spend half of the day recovering from its hangover, and the other half wishing it was time to swallow those pink tablets and nod out.  I like a lot of things about California, but the pollen count is not one of them.

I’ve been hacking away at this next book for a bit now, and it’s almost done, which is probably why I’m wasting time on here instead of editing.  The book has a title now, which is always the biggest pain in the ass for me, and it’s down to the final nits and copyedits, so I hope to start laying it out soon.  But I hate hate hate editing.  I mean, I like getting the bugs out, but I’ve read this book probably ten times since we left for Europe, and I’ve got at least a couple more to go.  And it’s like picking any random word (say, banana) and saying it over and over and over until you don’t even know what you’re saying anymore and it sounds completely alien.

The editing process is the most depressing part of the writing cycle for me, too.  I’m not creating anymore, and I feel like any ideas I get have to go on the back burner if I’m going to get this damn thing done.  When I’m in this deep on a final draft, it’s really easy for me to go see a movie and then rush home thinking “I want to write a space opera with zombies!” and put a 95% done book in the closet and start brain-dumping and outlining.  So things close in on themselves, and I want nothing more than to get this damn thing in a final PDF and upload it and be done. It’s also depressing because instead of reading great new books by other authors, I’m reading the same book over and over and over.  I can’t wait until I can read something that isn’t this book, especially because I have this huge pile of new stuff to read that’s just staring at me.

Okay, I should get back to this.  More news on this once I get a cover figured out and a web site and description and all of that good stuff.