Wandering in

*Wanders onto blog*

*Looks around*

Hello?

*Hears crickets*

All right, all right, I guess it’s been a while. I’ve been meaning to update for weeks, (really!) but every time I get around to doing so, something stops me. For instance, Baby 2 has been taking a nice nap and now I can hear him starting to squish. So we’ll see how far this gets…

Writing update first. The editing is going well – better than I would have expected at this point. I’m on page 184 of 221 and most days I am managing my daily five page quota. This is just a first-pass edit – if there is a section that requires a rewrite or much more thought I’ve merely highlighted it to go back to later. That way, these sections can simmer in my brain and perhaps by the time I get back to them I’ll be able to whip them off no problem. My feedback has also continued to be quite positive. I had an intense critique of my opening chapter a few weeks ago – we spent over an hour on it and I wound up having to revise a major detail, but, even then, the overall reviews were very good. And the feedback on the rewrite of that chapter was even better. One of my readers sent me a fabulous screamy visceral response that I go back to and read every time I’m feeling discouraged. That kind of review is *exactly* what my confidence needs.

And my confidence does need a bit of boosting these days. I’ve received nothing but resounding silence from a contact that I’d hoped to get some advice from (to be fair, I may have used an inactive email address, so I’m going to send a follow-up to the other address this week). But there is also the lingering fear of reaching the final stage in a project. And by ‘final stage’ I do not mean that I’ll finish up the first-pass edit, or even the major rewrite sections and say that’s that. But I am reaching the end of the first-pass edit stage. Which means that, at least once the rewrites are done, if I want to do something further with this story I’m going to have to, well, do it. And that thought is vaguely terrifying. I think that part of my sudden lack of confidence in the whole thing is the fact that the great maw of attempting publication is yawning before me with its contingent of monsters including rejection letters, editors telling me to change major details, bad reviews, etc etc etc. But if I decide I’m no good at this, I can just walk away, right?

Except that I can’t. I did walk away once, for a time. Not because I didn’t believe I was any good but because I didn’t have a major project to work on and I had a toddler keeping me busy most of the time. So the writing fell away. And I was miserable for it. I’d been writing my entire life and that was the only significant break I took from it. Yes, the yawning maw is scary. But it’s what I’ve worked towards for my entire life. So, likely in the next two weeks I’m going to have to get out my rappelling gear and start slipping down into the unknown.

Okay, that was the writing update. Onto the baby update! Baby 2 is wonderful and HUGE. He’s just over two months now and he’s already 16 pounds! He’s also my little wonderbaby – almost never cries, was able to hold his head up on day 1, was able to roll over at 6 weeks, sleeps most nights, plays with his toy on level 2 (for sitting babies, which he doesn’t yet do but is far more interested in that level). He has a little baby cold right now, which has turned his squeaks (his trachea hasn’t completely closed yet) into snuffle squeaks which are insanely cute but also very heartbreakingly sad. I have a cold too, but that’s far less important.

And, continuing proud mama time, Kid 1 is reading! He brings home these little readers from school that he’s never seen before and he reads them to me! It blows my mind to see this world opening up before him. Seems unbelievable that a mere five years ago he was as tiny and helpless as his brother. Nothing makes time fly quite like having kids.

There! I made it through a post. At this rate, maybe I’ll be able to unload the 158 pictures that are sitting on my camera from the past two weeks, catch up on some of the blogs that I follow, or do some editing for one of my dearest friends who is also a brilliant writer.