Revision and other endless pursuits

Over the course of the last week I've run a copy of the manuscript, and carried it in pieces each morning to the Starbucks. Sat and tried to read it fresh, as if it had been written by someone else. And the funny thing is, at times if felt like that. Late November was the last time I really read the novel from start to finish and in that short time I've already forgotten stuff. I kept coming across sentences and paragraphs I couldn't remember writing. It's a funny phenom, when you don't recognize your own work, even work from just a few months back.

I made notes all over the pages and now I am in the process of revising. Dawn called me at one point and said she had a feeling the first book was going to do well, that it was going to be one of those little underdog books that does better than people anticipate. I hope she's right and - not to kill the karma - I've had the same sense about it. There are advantages to bringing out a book with low expectations. I've cleared my calendar for the first four months of next year because that's all a book has, really, a narrow window of opportunity to find its market before it's remaindered and the next season's wave of books begins. So I know I'll be doing my publicity myself - creating mini-book tours in cities where I have friends willing to help me. Like my friend Kathy, for example, who lives in Seattle who offered to line up a few independent bookstores, bookclubs, groups to speak to, etc. before I come out to visit her. I can stay with her - which will be both cheap and fun and will ensure I have a built-in means of emotional support - and use her house as home base to pivot in different directions trying to work the Seattle market. And I plan to do this in several cities. I know it's up to me. I'm small potatoes at my press and nobody's spending any money on publicity in this horrible market anyway and besides...Here's the bottom line. There is a certain dignity and calmness in accepting that it is up to me, that the fate of my little book is in my own hands and those of my friends.

Otherwise, I bump up and down. The revision will take a couple of weeks and then I will step back again, look again at the holes that need to be filled, the plot lines that are petering out to nothing, the scenes that don't pay off. Yesterday I learned I didn't get into Jentel, one of the colonies in Wyoming. That sucks. It's a small colony and I thought I had a pretty good shot. Three still out there for summer and I also just re-applied to MacDowell for fall. Something will come through.