There's a reason for everything
Jun. 27th, 2011 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperancePrevarication has been one of my besetting sins since before I learned the word (at the age of eight, when I was poised before the blackboard, chalk in hand, asked to demonstrate oscilloscope traces, and couldn't make up my mind which to draw, and Dr Johnstone said to the rest of the class, "You see? This is what I was talking about, while Charles was out of the room: he prevaricates").*
Also, of course, it famously goes hand in hand with my job. Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of an imminent deadline, so we do notoriously wait for imminence. Focus is important, after all.
Anyway. I have a book due out at the end of September. The copy-edit arrived a couple of weeks ago. In electronic format, fortunately, so I can deal with it here in CA. It's due back by close of play UK time on the 30th inst - which is, um, three days away.
A couple of weeks ago, I had oceans of time. Now? Not so much. So why haven't I been doing it, why did I put it off so late?
I do also have a new novel to write, which is due in September; for the first week, I went on working on that. Oceans of time, right? Also, Karen's not working at the moment and there have been issues of health to address and all of that is distracting, not to mention the manifold pleasures and temptations of actually having her home all day.
This last week, we've been visiting her mother in Pocatello, Idaho; and I have been diligently working, in between sightseeing and games of Scrabble - but I've been diligently working on something else. As a proud member of Book View Cafe, it is my bounden duty to contribute to the collective. Which I do by copy-editing/proofreading our e-books, largely. I've been proofing Judith Tarr's The Dagger and the Cross: Crusader fantasy that predates my own Outremer, how could I resist...? Work and pleasure, rolled into one.
So now, yup. Three days left, and I've just opened the copy-edit of House of Doors. And spent five minutes staring at page one, unable to make a decision over a mark of punctuation. Which is the real reason why I've been putting this off so long, because I hate going through CEMs, because I always want to put everything back the way it was which is just unreasonable but even so. Every colon is considered, damn it! There's a reason why I punctuate as I do, it's all about the rhythms in the voice, and every little change upsets those rhythms and fractionally diminishes the impact of the text. No, really. No, it does...
*[EtA: as a result of a conversation we didn't have, Karen and I are agreed that it's likely he said "procrastinate", and I have conflated the two over the years.]
Also, of course, it famously goes hand in hand with my job. Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of an imminent deadline, so we do notoriously wait for imminence. Focus is important, after all.
Anyway. I have a book due out at the end of September. The copy-edit arrived a couple of weeks ago. In electronic format, fortunately, so I can deal with it here in CA. It's due back by close of play UK time on the 30th inst - which is, um, three days away.
A couple of weeks ago, I had oceans of time. Now? Not so much. So why haven't I been doing it, why did I put it off so late?
I do also have a new novel to write, which is due in September; for the first week, I went on working on that. Oceans of time, right? Also, Karen's not working at the moment and there have been issues of health to address and all of that is distracting, not to mention the manifold pleasures and temptations of actually having her home all day.
This last week, we've been visiting her mother in Pocatello, Idaho; and I have been diligently working, in between sightseeing and games of Scrabble - but I've been diligently working on something else. As a proud member of Book View Cafe, it is my bounden duty to contribute to the collective. Which I do by copy-editing/proofreading our e-books, largely. I've been proofing Judith Tarr's The Dagger and the Cross: Crusader fantasy that predates my own Outremer, how could I resist...? Work and pleasure, rolled into one.
So now, yup. Three days left, and I've just opened the copy-edit of House of Doors. And spent five minutes staring at page one, unable to make a decision over a mark of punctuation. Which is the real reason why I've been putting this off so long, because I hate going through CEMs, because I always want to put everything back the way it was which is just unreasonable but even so. Every colon is considered, damn it! There's a reason why I punctuate as I do, it's all about the rhythms in the voice, and every little change upsets those rhythms and fractionally diminishes the impact of the text. No, really. No, it does...
*[EtA: as a result of a conversation we didn't have, Karen and I are agreed that it's likely he said "procrastinate", and I have conflated the two over the years.]