I mean, haunting waiting for them to send me a check or the damned thing back, Gus. It was mailed this morning.

And bless Betsy for the machete and Micole for the encouragement.

I mean, ... waiting for them to send me a check or the damned thing back...It was mailed this morning.

Just thought you might want see that again, for a reality check, 'Suela.

I am looking now at a page of my galley.

From the first line to the last, there is no sense. It is all guttural noises and punctuation.

Gus, that may be a signal that you need to put it away for the night.

Seriously. My own "ok, back up and away honey, do it NOW" signal is when I find I'm answering a perfectly reasonable copy-editor query by typing in "(rolls eyes FOREVER)" or "I don't CARE what the transitive form is, damn it!"

Hearing the beat that DG is laying out, in a big way.

Reading your own stuff is hard enough.

It was suggested to me, elsewhere, that every writer not only needs a "stet" stamp: s/he needs a "FOaD!" Stamp.

As in, "fuck off and die".

I'd actually love one of those, so I could stamp it all over my tax returns.

Although one of the things this particular copy-editor got completely wrong was not realising that "woad" - as in, source of blue dyes - was the word I had not only typed, but meant to type. He tried changing it to "wood" and then asked me to check my sources, as one cannot get blue dye from wood.

I would have liked a stamp that said "W-O-A-D. F-O-A-D."

OK, I'm sorry that you have to deal with the inanity, deb, but that's really funny.

that's really funny.

I know. I was laughing even while I was damaging my forehead by pounding it against the keyboard.

Same copy guy did the same thing in "Matty Groves". He very carefully wrote out - on a series of post-its, mind you, apparently using the leg off a lilliputian spider - every definition he could find for "baiting", in reference to me spelling the word wrong.

Only one he left out was the definition, and spelling, I'd used: bating, a sudden upward movement of a falcon's wings, usually when startled.

Fuckwit. I so do need that FOAD stamp...

Okay, galley is done. Dead trees? In the mail.

On final analysis ... on reading the thing as if it was a book I'd purchased ...

... It sucks. The language has a pleasant rhythm that drags the eye along, and the world-building has an inner consistency that mostly works, but it is not about anything new.

Nothing new under the sun, Gus.

Bit by bit

Putting it together

Piece by piece

Only way to make a work of art

Every moment makes a contribution

Every little detail plays a part

Having just the vision's no solution

Everything depends on execution

Putting it together - that's what counts"

Yeah, a Sondheim quote, not his best but I think the point is a good one.

So if "The language has a pleasant rhythm that drags the eye along, and the world-building has an inner consistency that mostly works, but it is not about anything new". Hey as long as the first two are true, and it is in fact about something then the fact that this something is not new is irrelevent and probably unavoidable.