I believe it was the noted philosopher Tom Petty who once opined, “The waiiiiiiiiting is the hardest part,” and no truer words were ever spoken (other than “the check is in the mail.” ‘Cause it is. I swear it. Honest. April fools!). Where was I?
Oh yeah, the waiting. See, although I finished the writing part of Homemade Hollywood a few weeks ago, I actually didn’t hand it in until March 31, the drop-dead due date. Why? Well, I had a lot to do. The book was contractually required to be at least 75,000 words. No problem; flew by that. It was also required to not be more than 85,000. Flew by that as well. My patient editor at Continuum, David, asked that it not go over 90,000 or else. Yeah….well, I flew by that one, too. Damn book landed at 95,330 words–more than 20,000 words more than I had to write.
I had a lot of editing to do, but a funny thing happened when I sat down to slice and dice. The book lost weight like it had a tapeworm. Reading along, I discovered that A) most of it was pretty good, even the parts that I hated when I wrote them, and B) there was still some fat–stuff that didn’t go anywhere, places where I used 30 words where all I needed was five, and so on. And any time I got bored, I made like a chainsaw-wielding maniac–because if I’m bored, imagine how stupefied the reader would be.
In no time, the book was down to 87,000 words. I then added some stuff that should’ve gone in the first time, and now it rests comfortably at 89,100 or so. So now what? (Cue Tom Petty).
Yep, waiting.
Waiting for the last fan film photos to come in so I can send them to David.
Waiting to learn when the new publication date is.
Waiting to find out when we start copy editing.
Waiting for the second half of my advance.
Waiting to hold the book in my hands.
(sigh) Waiting. This is gonna be hard.
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