in the eating
May. 6th, 2009 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Proofs (in the form of PDFs ready for me to print out and read) will be arriving tomorrow for Bogus Science.
This is always a nerve-racking time with a new book, I find, because it's really the first opportunity I get to look at the text objectively. In theory that opportunity came earlier, when I was polishing the text preparatory to delivering it to the publisher, but of course that was soon after I'd written it: it was all too easy to read not so much the words that were actually there in front of me but the thoughts I'd been intending to express when I set those words down. Now I'll be seeing everything cold, and it'll be revealed to me in a stark, icy light quite how ghastly it all is.
Whatever, since my first warning of the proofs' arrival came this afternoon, and since the corrections are wanted a bit quickish, there's a certain level of ungentlemanly panic going on at Snarl Towers right at the moment.
To add to the sense of rabbits staring into headlights, I've also said that, before the end of what was already looking to be a busy month, I'll write 1500 hellishly witty words -- or at least words filled with a witlike substitute -- about pal Ian Watson for a convention program book. Plus there's a huge ghosting/editing job to finish off, and stuff to get ready for BookExpo America in a fortnight's time. And, oh yes, a couple of anthology editors have very flatteringly asked if . . .
This might be about the right moment for y'all to express sympathies to Pam for everything she's going to have to put up with over the next few weeks. I'm sure she'd be touchingly grateful for this small gesture.
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Date: 2009-05-06 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 02:46 am (UTC)She's grateful, but asks if she has to come to Texas to get them?
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Date: 2009-05-07 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 11:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 02:46 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2009-05-07 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 02:47 am (UTC)I'm hopeful my own text will be at least marginally better than that.
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Date: 2009-05-07 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 03:28 pm (UTC)It's me innate modesty speaking, guvnor.
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Date: 2009-05-07 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 04:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-07 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 02:47 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2009-05-07 01:43 am (UTC)Now I'll be seeing everything cold, and it'll be revealed to me in a stark, icy light quite how ghastly it all is.
Tetley's, dude . . . Tetley's. Grab 'em and sally forth with your shillelagh.
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Date: 2009-05-07 02:49 am (UTC)In fact, I'm still working my way through a sack of Sainsbury's Red Label we brought back from the UK last time we were over there. (The sack of FairTrade is, alas, a mere memory.)
"shillelagh"
Irish. Not Scots.
How are you getting along, S.T.? We've been thinking about you lots.
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Date: 2009-05-07 02:20 pm (UTC)Snob. What's the Scots version? Since I'm a blend of both I should know . . .
"How are you getting along, S.T.? We've been thinking about you lots."
Thanks for asking, P. Not too well, I'm sorry to answer. The grief is profound. No comfort in anything but the passage of time; although even this can't blunt the mourning, as you and Pam and all those who've had special relationships with four legged family members know. Zilla was special, and the way she died horrific. I fell like Lady Macbeth, although through no fault of my own, in that I can't seem to scrub up the blood and smell from deep in the carpet where she initially began to hemorrhage. And I can't stop crying.
I love you and Pam. Miss you.
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Date: 2009-05-07 02:42 pm (UTC)Scots don't/didn't use shillelaghs.
Sorry to hear that it's still tough going for you. Warm thoughts are being sent your way.
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Date: 2009-05-07 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 03:21 pm (UTC)"That's strait-jacket (or, better, strait-waistcoat)."
Ere! Prissily editing people is *my* job, d'ye hear?
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Date: 2009-05-07 03:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-07 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 03:21 am (UTC)I can tell you already that she won't be too gruntled when I mention the "virtual" part of that . . .
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Date: 2009-05-07 02:38 pm (UTC)Sympathies to Pam. In addition to being a writer, I am a writer's wife. I find the best thing is to purchase some nice, unbreakable scotch glasses. Every few hours, put some good-but-not-decadent scotch into one and quietly slip it into the office.
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Date: 2009-05-07 02:40 pm (UTC)I'll draw Pam's attention to your advice, but I've no great hopes she'll heed it, alas.