Bethanie's Brain

So here we are a week (or so) later, as promised, to report on what I accomplished with this editing/re-writing thing on the 2005 NaNo. Here's what I've got: -The timing of a couple of key events in the beginning were a little sloppy, so I fixed that and tightened things up. -And promptly discovered that I had fucked up the nether end of a plotline later on. Go me. -I took a look at the other parts of the story, i.e., The Middle and The End. Both were a stinking mess. I decided to work on fixing The End because a) it was a slightly smaller mess (due to the fact that it is infested with plot holes the size of Texas) and b) I figured it would be easier to fix The Middle if I knew where the bloody hell the story was headed. -I discovered that I have no idea what to do with The Middle. The plot lines are not so much tangled as ... well, frayed. Badly. -I discovered that a good way to keep myself from line editing, which the story is decidedly not ready for at this point, is to...

So no joke, the word verification for a yahoo email I just sent was: peeAT ??!???!!

This was my Google Quote of the Day: When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. - Mark Twain I'm going to post it on the wall of my new cube at work. In very large type.

So after a very long hiatus of about a year, I've decided it's time to pick up the 2005 NaNo project and edit the sucker (yes, it's a vampire novel and yes, pun intended - ok, you can go retch now). I've gotten as far as I did the last time - outlining the plot with notecards (although this time I'm using my StoryLines software , not that it will help or anything, but it sure is fun to play with) - and I'm stumped again as to how to proceed. (Which is pretty ironic considering what I do for a living, yanno?) The problem is that it's Just Damn Hard to see what the story needs, even after letting it sit for a year. I mean, I have whole characters that I'm just not sure should even be there, but I'd hate to cut them, re-write the Whole Damn Book and then discover that they do, indeed, belong in the story and then have re-re-write the Whole Damn Book all over again. That would suck (yeah, vampire, pun, blah-blah-blah). What, oh, what is Writer Lady t...

You can do an extra large load of laundry that consists entirely of Things That Are Pink. You trip over Barbie dolls, Polly Pockets, tea sets and 700 Things That Are Pink before breakfast. You’re pretty sure they make colors other than pink, but you can’t remember what they’re called. You know how many Disney princesses there are and can identify each one on sight by her name, the movie she stars in, the name of her prince, and the color of her dress, hair and shoes. The smaller people in your house have more makeup and high heels than you do.

And you thought we were done with this. Well, so did I. In fact, I thought we were done with this until last Thursday when I went into the office to help Boss Lady pack for the Big Move and Accounting Lady dropped by to say: "Oh, um, they can't fix that weird date problem, so you'll have to Totally Redo the submission package". Totally Redo. As in Start From Scratch. As in Start Over. As in The Dreaded Blue Screen. As in Pardon Me, I Need To Step Outside and Start Screaming. I shall spare everyone the gory details, but GOOD GRIEF. My vacation, which was supposed to start Saturday, starts today, because the Unpacking from the Big Move and Redoing of the blasted submission package took most of Sunday and Monday (Boss Lady being gone on a cruise and all). And now I have to keep checking my email for a couple of days to make sure nothing else goes wrong. Pardon Me, I Need To Step Outside and Start Screaming...

It is finally fucking over. My life has been one, long, apparently-fucking- endless nightmare of Grant Hell for the last ... what, six weeks? eight weeks? Pitiful. I don't even fucking know. Anyways. It's over. Boss Lady's 5-year renewal has been delivered to Fabulous Private University's research office and will presumably be on its way to to the feds very soon. Halle-freakin-lujah. I think I did more work on this one than I have done on any other grant proposal in my life. I did budget stuff. I did subcontact budget stuff. I did biosketches. I did figures. I did tables. I did the bloody references . I edited the science. I edited the abstract. I edited the budget justifications. I re-edited the science. I re-did the bloody references. I did electronic submission package stuff. I re-re-did the bloody references. It was endless. I am exhausted. I am going to go collapse now.