…and vacuuming of commas.
I didn’t get up so early today, despite the best intentions, but I did spend 8 hrs pretty much straight (with the exception of buying this book related shirt downtown for my husband) working on Moonshifted.
I realized today — two days before the book is due! — that I needed to put in chapter breaks. I don’t write with chapter breaks. I am mystified at those of you that do. I write in scenes, and each scene arcs, and they’re all in order…but no breaks. My book is one long document for me. So putting them in feels weird to me, as much as I know it needs to be done.
I was whinging about this on twitter when I thought, “You know what I’ll do? I’ll go look at Nightshifted on the German Amazon page. That’ll cheer me up, and help me find my spine. Just seeing that things are real.” So I did and…it was ranked in the 24,000’s. Which is the highest I’ve seen it yet. After I tried not to squeal with glee in the coop office space I was hanging out in, I went and saw that Moonshifted was also in the 24,000’s, too!
You know. The book I was complaining about putting chapter breaks in.
So, yeah. I got my spare spine from the spare spine-a-torium and promptly installed it and got to work. ;). (I do realize that those numbers mostly mean nothing, like that 3 people pre-ordered my books today or something…but but but still. That they’re there, real, and that people want to buy them sometimes…what the what. It’s amazing to me. Like looking down and every day finding that I have a tail.)
I got through 3/4ths of the novel today, and it hung together in a very bookish fashion. (With well placed chapter breaks? Who knows :P.) I could push on, but I have to be up early tomorrow, and the book’ll get trickier the nearer I get to the end, and I’m pretty burnt out after today’s close pass. I’ll start out fresh again tomorrow afternoon. :D