I was supposed to be done with No Man’s Land. In Fact the first 1/3 (first volume. I’m not even making a pretense of their being complete stories each. it wouldn’t work. It’s just “No Man’s land, volume I.”
It was supposed to be ready to go out. I mean I finished the book early October.
But then there was the trip, and getting really sick on the way back, and that illness seems to have put paid to my thyroid. Now I’m medicated (not 100% yet, but better) and I’ve been trying to work, against a backdrop of house breakdowns and repairs.
This last weekend we went to ConFinement in Tennessee, which means we drove up on Thursday and back on Monday.
Normally I have trouble editing in the car, but I got to 2/3 on the way to TN. And on the way back, before we got in the car, I caught my kids joking in family chat that they should put me in a dragon carrier, on top of the car and make me edit.
Obviously, they didn’t put me on top of the car (you think.) And I’m obviously not really a dragon (obviously. Probably.)
Still I spent the entire time on the way back editing, and I finished it just before we got home. (HOW can sitting in the car for hours make you that tired?) and partly because I ate really badly. I have great sympathy for RFK Jr. Honestly. It’s almost impossible to eat convenience food on the road without eating a lot of sugar, and my body deals with sugar much like alcohol. Actually it deals better with alcohol. So I had a massive “hangover” today.
Took me till 9 pm to even vaguely function.
However, tomorrow I need to sit my behind down and enter the edits. (And the last third is going to take writing a few chapters and beefing up the rest.)
So, I’m not a hundred percent sure what I’m trying to tell you, but if you’re dragging on an editing job (or whatever your hard part of the writing job is) get someone to put you on a carrier on top of a mini van driving across the country, with the manuscript and I guarantee you’ll figure it out.
…. as for the bugs on your teeth, I have no recommendations.
Mad Genius Club 
28 responses to “The Caged Dragon”
Snork! Good thing I wasn’t drinking when I read that.
Bugs in teeth. Yeah, that’s my new name for editing jobs. “Gotta take care of …”
And I hear you about sugar. I’m almost to the point that I have to stop fooling myself that it’s not the cause of half my main health issues.
I have in-laws my age who speak casually of eating large quantities of doughnuts, cake, candy.
This confuses me. By the time you’re sixty, surely either common sense has kicked in OR you have at least one health problem…
I say nothing. Maybe we are from different planets.
“HOW can sitting in the car for hours make you that tired?”
It has to be the vibration and road noise. Plus eyestrain. Those three do it for me, even if I am a passenger. Throw in trying to edit on a bobbling laptop and, yeah.
I love driving places and travelling. I hate not being able to eat real food while I am doing it. Fortunately, my longest trips these days are down to visit the Dragonette at UCF, so a coffee from Buc-ees can suffice until I get where I am going. But anything long enough to require a real meal becomes challenging.
Being her editor and the one who (I think) first floated the idea of doing the book in three volumes, let me be clear:
There was never any pretense that it was three separate stories. The comparison I made (and suggested as reference for marketing) was the Victorian triple-decker novel. Except, you know, this book isn’t boring.
This was a huge part of why we got a camp-trailer.
No, I can’t write (because the ranch kid drives the truck-van and trailer) but when we do stop, it can be *anywhere* and we can drop into the back for a sandwich, or even take a nap.
Dan wants to sell everything and buy an RV.
I think he’s insane.
Have him set up an RV as a guest room. It’ll cure it. 😀
This is his idea for “we’ll live between the son’s locations. BUT I can’t have a library in an RV.
:waggles hand: You can, but it’d be very small for the dead tree part, and which of you two is driving?
Mostly him, TBF. Unless it has a lot of assists.
I also am in love with the idea of RVing.
Then I ponder the reality and shudder.
Maybe it’s because I want a TARDIS.
Even I want a TARDIS, and I’m not particularly into the TV show. 😀
I don’t know if I would even travel in it, given how much hassle it seems to give the travelers, but I want a “bigger on the inside” place to store my books 🙂
Dan DESPERATELY wants us to embrace the RV life, so we can spend six months with each kid. I have a library that is straining this huge house….
That’s its great charm.
Then, I want a garden too.
Perhaps a castle where the doors can lead to odd places.
There’s a smattering of platformer RPGs in the Castlevania videogame franchise (specifically Symphony of the Night, Harmony of Dissonance and to a lesser extent Aria of Sorrow) where I kind of end up wanting to hijack the bad guy’s magic castle for my very own.
I think he’s not facing the “Mostly staying in RV parks which are in hte middle of nowhere” etc.
He’s looking at it as “go to cons without leaving home” and “Spend six months with each kid.”
Sarah, you need to point out that both of you have the type of major medical issues where continuity of care, availability of meds, etc. from staying in one place is much better than “do we get lucky at the local urgent care.”
I don’t know what type of health coverage you have, but I can tell you from when I was travelling that figuring out the network providers, etc. will also be fun.
My uncle used to haul a support car (I want to say around the size of a Ford Escort?) behind his RV so that he could do grocery runs, etc, once he parked the RV. I don’t know if that part would be as important for you guys during cons, but I would think it would be something to keep in mind when the RV is staying in one place for months at a time.
And then there was that time he was coming over to visit us, and whatever he was using to haul the support car had issues on the turnpike, about an hour from our home. In a driving rainstorm at night. Mom and sibling were occupied with prepping for whatever shindig Uncle was coming over for (wedding or milestone birthday in the family, something of that nature). I volunteered to drive Dad out there, so that he could drive Uncle’s support car to our hometown, while Uncle drove his RV to our hometown, while I followed them as backup. Fun times. (It wasn’t that incident which led to Uncle giving up the RV; I think the hassle just mounted up over time, combined with some health problems.)
FWIW, the couple of relatives I have/had who owned RV seemed to get tired of them after a couple of years, and my parents, who’d fantasized about having one for a while, shied away the first time they took a good hard look at the logistics.
We’re going to need to talk about modern coolers before the next trip aren’t we? (Like the one we brought back from your place.) They’re much improved over the coolers I grew up tent camping with, and they really do keep stuff cold without leaking water everywhere.
Because if you’re driving the only reason to not have home made food is wanting to try a place.
Regarding bugs in teeth: full face motorcycle helmet. Hope this helps next time.
Jolie LaChance KG7IQC unstagehand@yahoo.com
Pig-faced bascinet. Vision low is pretty restricted, though, so have to hold up the laptop – which will catch the bugs just fine.
A little creative sheet-metal, and a dragon-visaged bascinet would be born.
I actually edit on paper. 😀
You’re alot braver than me. 🙂 I don’t think I’d be able to get the paper edits transcribed to pixels accurately.
Hmm. A paper dragon-visaged bascinet seems a bit ephemeral.
Unless it might take dictation.
Anyway, congrats on gettin’er done!
Also, thank you sooooo much for the brain worm… I have been poking at “I know why the caged dragon __________” titles all day.
LOL
I know why the caged dragon edits.