(no subject)

[truepenny]

I have started the next editing pass on Kekropia, which I guess we can call the penult. There'll be another after my editor reads it, of course, but I want to fix all the problems I know about before I send it to her, so that when she gives me her comments, I can have new problems to fret over.

Thus far, I am pruning like a mad weed-whacker. (See above re: quack!)

And of course, because such is the perversity of the human brain, I have also been ambushed by an extremely cool and shiny sfnal story idea (well, the sfnal bit isn't so cool and shiny, although it has the potential to spread its wings and be very shiny indeed, but the story is shiny like a wild glittering pinwheel*) which I would much rather be working on. Or finishing the short story that's gone all coy and weird on me. Or ... well, you know, just about anything. I am not actually sick to death of Kekropia at the moment, but I am sick to a good nonfatal case of flu.

There's a great bit in a Pogo book, where Churchy and someone (Howland? Pogo? Albert? I can't remember) are running away from something--or rather, the someone is running, carrying Churchy, and Churchy is yelling ON! ON! as he gets incrementally juggled into different positions, until he's finally upside down and Kelly turns the word balloon upside down, too, and Churchy's shouting NO. This is how I feel about Kekropia, and have been for some time: ON keeps turning into NO, and I play Solitaire or Pinball or read archived entries on Tomato Nation and disturb the cats with my hyena-like laughter.

And my deadline is thirteen days away, which means the ms had better be ready to go in eleven days at the very latest (so that I can get up and out the door on the twelfth day in time to be sure to catch the FedEx guy for overnight delivery, because no I don't want to be printing the bastard out in the late morning of day 12, I have enough stress-related ailments and difficulties as it is, thank you very much).

Kekropia is twelve chapters, 751 ms pages, 171,037 words long.

I'm on page 35.

This is the sound of me not panicking.


---
*This is what you call the honeymoon phase. It won't last.

Comments

[larryhammer]

It's Albert carrying Churchy. Love that sequence to pieces, I do.

It occurs to me that rereading Pogo collections during breaks is a good way to avoid panics.

---L, raised on possum.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Somehow, I thought you might know. *g*

Sadly, the Pogo collections all belong to my parents. It's another thing to add to the list for When I Have Infinite Money.

[larryhammer]

Part of my collecting budget goes to buying up the Fantagraphics complete series as they come out. Which now they're taking like a couple years between volumes <muttermutter>, has been easy. Because the collections were my parents' too.

My mother has (at least, I think she does) one of the first I Go Pogo buttons, from 1952, when she helped run the campus campaign as a freshman. Science fiction from my father, Pogo and Tom Lehrer from Mom.

---L.