Classes at the Grandbabies' Spa

~I made it through the five day "spa" vacation with my four grandkids in WV. In my last post I compared the babysitting time to being at a diet and exercise spa, but that certainly wasn't all of it. I did lose a couple of pounds according to my very unreliable scale. That's the best kind of scale to have, isn't it? That way you can always say the crazy thing must not be working right if it shows you gained three pounds over a weekend or something totally ridiculous like that. Certainly it wouldn't have anything to do with that cheesecake you ate. ;-)

~There wasn't any cheesecake eating going on this weekend for me. Just leftover hotdogs and that delicious mac and cheese. Eating that stuff you can believe I got plenty of running exercise to lose even one pound.

~But I got to thinking about other classes the grandkid sitting experience opened up. Say craft class - learning to express yourself with clay. I'm really good at making snakes and worms. Here's Katie with her turtle creation she did all by herself while I checked on the twins who were napping.

~There was the negotiation class. "If I tell you fifty eleven stories, will you go to bed?" Give or take a few stories. Or "Eat two bites of your chicken and then you can have ice cream."

~I can't forget time management. Diaper this one, diaper that one, break up a scuffle between the girls, load the dishwasher, load the washer, wash the babies, wash the girls, cook that mac and cheese, hunt sippy cups, pick up toys, straighten rugs, grab Matt off the back of the couch, put Ashley in time-out, keep Katie away from Ashley in time-out, make popcorn, take a gulp of tea, diaper this one and that one again.

~I think I may have failed the time management, but I did manage to get Ashley off to first grade both school day mornings. That surely deserves a C plus. So a passing grade.

~Now it's time to get back to work here at home. First I have to wade through my e-mails and catch up on chores. Tomorrow I plan to see if I can find a desk under all this stuff that has accumulated on my desk. It grows if you don't keep an eye on it, you know. All that has to be done, but I'm itching to be writing even though I'm a little stuck on what's next. My characters keep popping into my head and I'm hoping my subconscious is working on that what next problem. But for sure I want to be pursuing the story again with my fingers on the keyboard and my mind back in my Shaker village in the year 1845.

~Don't forget about my February giveaway - your choice of two of my last six books and Laura Frantz's The Frontiersman's Daughter. You can leave a comment here to be entered or send me an e-mail from my website, www.annhgabhart.com. Thanks to all of you who e-mailed me after you got my newsletter. I enjoy hearing from my reading friends. Hope you have a great rest of the week.

The News of the Day - Publishing, Editing and Reviews

Hi, guys. Wednesday rolls around quickly for somebody like me who's always a couple days behind on chores - both writing and household. Never enough days in the week to do all I want to do. Of course that might be because number one I'm not as organized as I should be and number two because I want to be at my desk writing or at least pretending to be writing all the time. Except of course when the grandbabies come to visit.

I want to be writing, but sometimes - like now - when I'm between books, I do a million other things that make me think I'm working, that almost satisfy that itch to be writing, but don't do a thing to get a new story started on my computer screen. You know, stuff like blogging or Facebook or sending out cards about The Believer or editing already written novels. I suppose the editing is not really writing time wasted. Editing is a necessary part of the process of getting that book ready to go out and find readers. That's what I've been doing this week. I got my editor's suggestions of ways to improve my upcoming book, The Seeker. I agreed with most of them and so I'm trying to do a few tweaks here and there to improve the story.

Since I had to race to find The End before my deadline in July, I didn't rework this book as much as I usually do. So I'm sure I'll see lots of places I can improve my writing. I don't want any of my scenes to be so rough that they might bump readers right out of the story and make them realize they're reading and not really living that story as they'd thought they were before they hit the pothole I'd left in my writing.

A lot of people are really surprised when they find out it usually takes at least a year after a publishing company gets a writer's finished novel before it actually makes it out onto a bookstore shelf. They think once it's written that the process is almost over, but really it's just getting started at the publisher's end. First your editor gives advice on improving the story. Other people are working on a cover that will catch readers' eyes. The marketing people are working on a plan to pitch this particular book to the most likely readers. Some of that's going on right now for The Seeker - a whole year before the book will be released. Later a copy editor will be going over the manuscript with a fine tooth comb to check for all the little hard to read or plain wrong things the writer missed. Here's where you hope you have a sharp-eyed editor who won't let your mess-ups such as changing a character's name mid-book get by. I've done that, but so far I've always caught it myself. That's why I keep a list of every character I name in a book no matter how minor the character might be so I can go back and see if it was Roy or Ray in that earlier scene. But eventually with a lot of people's help and input the book does get published - a couple of years or more after the author fired up her computer and began filling up page one with words.

And that's where I am with The Believer. Published. Hearing about people spotting it in stores. Beginning to get feedback from readers. Seeing reviews. I wish I could be like one writer I heard speak and not read reviews - ever. But I can't. My problem and I think it's a problem most writers - most people - share is that one or two negative words can sort of spoil the whole review even if the majority of the comments are favorable. That's like when somebody is talking to you and telling you what a great job you may have done on something and then they throw in that "but." That's when you groan because you know they're about to lower the boom and tell you something you don't want to hear. You end up forgetting all the good words before that but.

Of course constructive criticism can help us all if we're open to it, but I don't think of reviews as constructive criticism. They are simply somebody's opinions. And it's better for me as a writer not to get too excited about great reviews or too down about not so great reviews. The same book can get both according to the mood of the reader and what the reader likes in a story. I wrote the best story I could at the time. I liked it. I liked my characters, Elizabeth and Ethan, and the readers I'm hearing from say they like them too. And now I have to make my new story the best I can.

So have a great rest of the week. I'll be in Frankfort Saturday 10 till 2 or maybe 4 at the Paul Sawyier Library for a Book Fair. If you're in the area, come by to see me. And then I'm looking forward to a visit from my agent and editor. I'm going to show them how far out in the boonies I live. They'll think they've come to the end of nowhere when they get here. Oh yeah, and my blog tour is next week. I'll tell you more about it Sunday.