Faster, Faster!

My apologies for being absent from this blog for a few days. I'm in the editing and revision phase of Fiesta of Smoke, with a May 7th deadline looming. Yesterday I finished editing and revising the hard copy, by working at it 8 to 10 hours a day.  A friend told me that it took three editors a year to edit James Mitchner's Hawaii. I've gone through 1011 pages in a week! There are myriad things to check: Spanish and French spelling, punctuation and syntax; historical veracity; the time line of the plot; spelling; internal agreement of the facts; not to mention my own sometimes arcane sentence structure, word choice and verbosity. My desk is cleared except for my laptop, the manuscript box with its two plus reams of paper, a Spanish and a French dictionary, a Thesaurus and a foot-high stack of books on Mexican, particularly Chiapan, history. Now, for the long and intense process of imputing all the changes into the computer.

The cap of my red pen developed a tiny crack, at the beginning of this process. Every time I throw the pen down on the desk and start to rise for a break, the cap flies off and leaps across the desk like a cricket. No amount of careful handling will subvert this pen's will to be capless and ready for action. I say I need a break; it says, No, no! Keep working! It's a small synchronicity but, as I have never in my life had a pen act this way, one that I must heed. Even though my brain feels like it's on fire; despite the crick in my back and the sensation that my fingers are handicapped with lead weights, Fiesta of Smoke is inching its way toward the moment when it leaves my desk, wings its way through cyberspace and lands in the hands of my publisher.

Thank you for your patience with this process. I promise to be back to daily posts, after May 7th. Until then, I hope some passion is calling you with equal ferocity, demanding your focused attention, your creativity and your sense of your own power. After all, isn't dreaming a dream, setting a course toward it, and enduring all storms along the way a big part of what it is to be fully human? So,  hurray for you! Hurray for me! Hurray for our side! And full speed ahead!