Morning, my dears. I’m…

Morning, my dears. I'm trying to motivate to work. So far this morning, I've finished reading the Gilman mystery, had a long chat with Roshani, and done quite a bit of straightening up. All the rooms but Kavi's are now pretty clean, which is a big accomplishment. But Adriana is here from 8-12 to watch the kids not so I can clean, but so I can do final edits on the book, and I am totally avoiding doing them. Sigh.

Partly it's that it's kind of a project. Usually, for my short stories, I read them aloud (ideally to an audience) as a final edit. It helps a lot in getting the last tweaks on language, and if, as I'm reading, I find some section boring to read, that's a good sign that it'll be boring for my readers too. So I fix it. Which is all well and good for short stories, but for a novel? It's intimidating. Also, no one wants to listen to me reading the whole book out loud, and so I'm going to read it to myself in an empty room, which will feel silly. And is much less fun than having an audience who laughs at the right places.

Mostly, though, I think I'm just scared about finishing this. When I send it to Bob tomorrow, it goes out of my hands. And the last time I did this with a book (FOUR years ago!), it didn't go well. To say the least. So I've been completely blocked on it for a good week now. I should have done this last weekend and sent it to Bob last Monday, and I didn't, for no good reason.

Well, hopefully telling you about my anxiety will shame me into just getting over it. One way or another, the book goes out tomorrow. This I promise.

Sigh.