February

I was going to have this be a "reading roundup" kind of post, but I hardly read a thing in January. Three books, one of which was that young adult mystery I mentioned earlier. The other two were Book 10 and Book 11 in the "Dance to the Music of Time" series and now I'm reading Book 12, which is the last one. I'm unhappy with myself for doing so little reading, but maybe I was just taking a break.

What HAS been occupying my time, at least the last ten days of it, is the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest (http://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Novel-Award-Books/). My writing goal for January was to enter this contest, but early in the month I decided not to. My novel wasn't ready to enter, it was awful. I needed to rewrite it completely, there wasn't time. It was inherently worthless, no one would ever want to read it anyway. I would get knocked out in the first round, and that would leave me so demoralized that I wouldn't write anything for the rest of the year. Etc., etc.

Then, on January 24th, CreateSpace (Amazon's self-publishing branch, which co-sponsors the contest) sent me an email to let me know that the contest was now open for entries. And I thought, perversely -- Hey, why not? So then I spent a frantic week revising, submitted my manuscript, and then have continued to edit it all day every day since. The entry period is January 24 - February 6 -- or until they get 5000 entries (there are actually 2 categories, each accepting 5000 entries, so each category could close at a different time). Once you submit your manuscript you can go right on editing it until they close the contest -- which could be at any moment. Every morning I wake up and think, "I wonder if the contest has closed?" Right now, as I'm typing this, I'm thinking, "I wonder if the contest has closed in the last five minutes?"

Last night I made one last change to the manuscript, uploaded it, and then said to Rocket Boy, "That's it, I'm not touching it again."

"Oh good," he said. "It's probably fine."

As I was taking my shower, I realized that my "pitch" (the 300-word description of your novel that they use to reduce the number of entries from 5000 to 1000 in the first round) was all wrong and that I would have to start over from scratch. I thought about getting out of the shower, going back to my computer, and doing it right then, in case the contest closed overnight, but I resisted. I made myself go to bed and do a Sudoku. Looking at numbers keeps me from thinking about words.

Mornings with the twins are agony. I want to revise my novel but can't, must make puzzle after puzzle, go for a stroller walk, fix snack, change diapers... Also, must ENJOY all these activities, because these are the wonderful times that will be gone so soon and I must EXPERIENCE them to the fullest and not be distracted by how I'm going to rewrite Chapter 8.

I want to make it clear that I really don't expect to make it through the first round of this contest. I'm going to be one of those (up to 8000) people who sit around on February 24th saying "huh!" Therefore I should just chill out and start on my February writing goal, whatever that is.

I wish the contest would just hurry up and close, put me out of my misery.

OK, gotta go, my pitch is waiting to be rewritten.