This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

I finished my revision!

My next responsibility is to start the next revision (draft 7) as soon as possible.

But before I do that, I'm taking just a few days off... from revising. Not from creating things.

Those of you who were around the blog in January might remember Basil, the common house zebra. Well, after I created Basil, a request came in for Sock Sunny and Sock Tanker.

This is real-life Sunny.

This is real-life Tanker.

Sunny the dog and Tanker the cat live in Florida with two seven-year-olds. Sunny LOVES Tanker. Tanker's feelings for Sunny are more complicated, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that months and months after acquiring the appropriate socks, I FINALLY got to work.

I started with Sock Sunny, because a sock dog requires less altering of a sock zebra pattern than a sock cat does. Socks animals made from this pattern generally turn into long-faced, thin animals, not wonderfully roly-poly cats with round heads. I really wasn't sure what I …

Lateish last night, in the middle of the sixth revision of what will be my fourth published book, I inaugurated Notebook 24.

It's been a long journey to the middle of the sixth revision of my fourth book. First I needed to write all the other books, and revise them, and write this one, and revise it five times. After I revise it for the sixth time, I will probably revise it for the seventh time.

Confession: I'm tired and cranky.
BUT,
 I'm not the only one who was working hard in my office yesterday.
See the lily? (The tall, skinny one in the middle?)

Look what it had done by the end of the day.

How the heck did it do that? I don't know. But I'm guessing it started a long time ago.
Keep trying.

It's hard to focus on a hard revision when my new home remains chaotic and I could be organizing, cleaning, and hanging up pictures, rather than fixing this book. The news, which is heartbreaking everywhere, every single day, also makes it difficult. But I am focusing and fixing the book, because it feels even more awful not to.


In the meantime, it isn't all chaos.






Further afield, yesterday in New Jersey, we got together with this distinguished gentleman…


...and totally learned to GOLF.

Sort of.

It was our first time. We started at the driving range, where my dad taught us the basics, demonstrated a few things, then made extremely kind and encouraging comments as it became clear that I CAN'T HIT GOLF BALLS. Oh my goodness. They're so small and far away!




Oh my goodness. When I actually managed to hit the ball, it would usually go in the right direction, and sometimes it would even have some lift and go a little bit far. But probably 75% of the time, I didn't eve…

I also found a new home. I'm moving! (To the next town over.) Cambridge, I love you and I'll miss you. But you're too expensive, and also, you're LOUD.

May all the goodness continue... though I wouldn't complain of a slower pace.

And that's the news from here.

Sometimes, while writing, instead of feeling like, "Gosh, this is really hard," I feel like, "Holy hell. This is AGONIZING." I expect this happens to most every writer. When it happens to me, I call it the I Don't Wannas, because, as it gets to be time for me to sit my butt in the chair and start working, every cell in my body is screaming, "I DON'T WANNA! I DON'T WANNA! I DON'T WANNA!"

This can happen at any point in a project, but for me, there are particular circumstances under which it always happens. When I'm coming to the end of the planning stage of a revision, for example, and transitioning into the actual doing-the-work stage, the I Don't Wannas arrive like clockwork. I think it's because in that moment, I'm holding in my cupped hands the entirety of a finished draft that's not working AND an unstarted draft composed only of magic ideas, and it feels like the magic is dribbling away through my fingers. When I&…

As I've mentioned recently, I'm revising a manuscript. Here's a breakdown of what this revision tends to look like on a daily basis:
For one hour or so, I reread and ponder the responses of my early readers and my own notes (as I blogged about recently).For maybe two or three hours, I look back over the revising I did yesterday and all the days before, getting a second look at my revisions and changing things here and there.For maybe an hour or an hour and a half, I push forward in the book, maybe revising one more chapter. I find I'm working anywhere from two to seven hours in a session (with a lot of breaks), depending on what else I'm doing that day and how quickly I get mentally drained. I never sit down intending to work seven hours – generally that's too much, too draining – but occasionally I'll look up and be startled to see how much time has passed. (This happens more often in summer than winter – the sun sets so late!)

Sometimes I only skim the re…