I had the blood and fire rule when my boys were young. You know, unless it’s blood or fire, don’t bother me.
NORA ROBERTS, The Observer, Nov. 19, 2011
Although I still smile when I read Nora’s quote, until I started writing full time myself, I felt more sympathy for her kids than I did for her.
I mean, really – telling your kids to buzz off when you’re writing, unless they’re bleeding or the house is on fire-? Seemed a bit harsh. Poor kids. What a selfish, driven, heartless meanie of a mom.
But now that I deal with looming deadlines myself, now that interruptions and unwelcome surprises are an almost daily part of my writing life, I’ve changed my perspective. I think of her quote, and I finally understand.
Take the past few weeks. My editor wanted a major revision to the third and final Marrying Mr Darcy book, and she needed it to be completed in roughly two-and-a-half weeks – which meant getting up early every day and writing nonstop for six hours, taking a break, and writing for two to three more hours in the evening.
Ordinarily, I’d take a deep breath, hunker down, and get on with it.
But. On day one of the first week, it snowed, and school was cancelled. Could I watch my grandson for the day? On day three of the second week, the heater gave out in the middle of a serious cold snap, and on day four the kitchen sink backed up. Liquid-Plumr didn’t do the trick; a line snaked down the pipe didn’t do the trick, either.
The blockage would require major under-sink surgery…and most of an entire day to clear.
Workmen wandered in and out, the dog barked incessantly, dirty footprints crisscrossed the kitchen floor like a cha-cha diagram, and my stress levels rose as quickly as the temperature inside the heat-deprived house fell.
I returned to my laptop late that afternoon with visions of Bob Cratchit hunched over his desk, shivering and scribbling away. I had new sympathy for Bob and for Nora.
Then, two days before the first deadline, I received the copy edits back for book two. Copy edits are important, because they’re a writer’s last chance to fix any errors before the book goes into final production. I was glad to see that there were very few corrections. But the spacing was all over the place.
I remembered with dismay that I’d (a) accidentally deleted my Word document back in November and (b) had converted the PDF version back into Word, figuring the problem was solved.
On the surface, the document looked fine; but there were section breaks at the bottom of each page, missing tabs, extra tabs, extra returns, weird bottom margins, and sentences that stopped in the middle of a page and dropped to the next line. But with no time to fix it, I sent it back to my editor and promptly forgot about it.
And now here it was again, back to haunt me. And all of it – every section break, every missing tab and every extra return – had to be fixed. I wanted to cry.
Also, my editor added, sorry for the last-minute notice, but could I possibly turn those edits around in 24 hours?
Now I really wanted to cry. But there wasn’t time.
It took me an entire day – from 6 AM until 7:30 PM – to fix the spacing issues. Factor in the five-hour time difference (I’m in the States and my editor’s in London) and I had to get up at 4 AM the following day to review the copy edits one last time and ensure she had them by 7 AM (noon, in the UK).
Reader, I did it. I don’t know how, but I got those copy edits finished and emailed to London in the nick of time. My editor was happy, I was happy, the sink was unclogged and the house was once again warm.
So I poured myself a large glass of blood-red wine that evening and sat in front of a roaring fire with my feet propped up, and I couldn’t help but think…
…blood and fire. Sometimes, you really do need both.
Follow me on Bookbub!
