Packing is coming right along. I’ve put the preschooler to work putting books in boxes, which she’s very good at. I’ll be packing up my desk today, but the laptop will stay available and the network won’t come down until Friday. So I’ll only be offline Fri. afternoon through Monday afternoon, with possible internet access in between via coffee shop or hotel.

I did finish my proposal, my editor read it on Tues. and gave it the thumb’s up (yay!), and I’m looking forward to writing the rest in my new office! In the meantime I’ll think about music for the project. I really like starting my days with the Gimme Gimmes, so maybe I’ll find songs by them that fit this book.

I have to say that getting sent back to the drawing board to start over is not the worst thing that can happen. I think this really is a stronger, better book. One of the things I’ve gotten out of Fast Draft is not being so married to things. It’s okay to run something up the flagpole and take it back down if nobody salutes. Not every partial has to become a full. Or maybe it’ll happen later; I’ve had plenty of ideas go on the back burner only to come out again in a revised form and sell down the road. It’s a lot easier to throw away a couple of chapters (or just file them away for future consideration) when you know you can write another 20 pages the next day. It’s not like losing months of work.

And the benefit of learning my core story and identifying my voice has made writing a synopsis a billion times easier and faster. I know where and how my “core” has to fit in a story and I know I can put it into any set of elements or heat level. It’s really demystified the process I used to stumble through intuitively and given me a tool to use consciously and deliberately. (The heat level on this book, btw, can be described as Rome Is Burning.)