Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: ecstatic
  • Music: Jets Overhead, "George Harrison."

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest.

Yes! I have the sign-off, and the second book in the Newsflesh trilogy, Deadline, has been sent safely off to my publisher, where it can be someone else's problem for a little while. (Note that this doesn't actually mean the book is in its final form, since Orbit has the right to request changes and edits—I made changes and edits to Feed after it had been turned in—but I become a much happier bunny after it's slammed down on my editor's virtual desk. That means I made my deadline. I win)

Final book stats:

149,142 words.
513 pages.
Twenty-seven chapters.

I love finishing the process of finishing a book (and yes, that sentence is supposed to look like that; finishing things is hard). It lets me fall in love all over again. I talk about writing books like it's building a house. Revisions are what happen when the house is flawed, and needs to be torn down and built back up again. But finishing is just going through and making it a showplace, ready to be shown off to the world. The heavy lifting is done, and suddenly the book...the book is just amazing all over again. It's a book.

If there's any point during the process where I am totally uncritical of myself, it's this moment, right here. Don't worry, it will pass.

Now I get to settle in and work on the third book in the trilogy, and then...then I'm done. All finished, no more effort, no more struggle, just done. I love these people. I've loved them for years. I hope that when you meet them, you'll love them, too. But for now, I'm turning it in.

Yay.
Tags: busy busy busy, deadline, good things, mira grant, turning it in, zombies
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  • 28 comments

archangelbeth

April 20 2010, 23:52:02 UTC 7 years ago

*has a moment of writer-jealousy over your word-count*

*cheers you anyway*

seanan_mcguire

April 21 2010, 18:41:00 UTC 7 years ago

Oh, don't. These books are so long they hurt to write.

archangelbeth

April 21 2010, 18:59:55 UTC 7 years ago

Ha! My bane is that I write too long and have to chop back. I'm trying to console myself that if I chop as much as I can, so every word drags the eyeball across the page in a headlock, it won't matter so much and some publisher won't flinch.

Thus, I'm jealous at the word-count. O:>