{"id":1035,"date":"2020-07-03T21:07:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-04T01:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1035"},"modified":"2020-07-04T11:39:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-04T15:39:54","slug":"normal-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/normal-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Normal(?) Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

So. Been a little while since I\u2019ve written, and suddenly a lot has changed. My country as a whole seems to have decided that COVID-19 is finished. Dunzo. In the rear-view mirror. Smell ya later, coronavirus. Yeah, OK, so in a few states, cases are exploding again, but those are other<\/i> states. What happened there can\u2019t possibly happen anywhere else. Time to start going out, everyone. Get a move on!\u00a0Mama needs a haircut!<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately (?), being out of work means I don\u2019t have to worry about being pushed back into the thick of humanity. My current reality is not going to change much from what it\u2019s been since March 11. Which is just as well, because the Metro stations that are usually part of my journey to work are shut down for repairs for the summer. Even if I had somewhere to go, I don\u2019t know how the hell I\u2019d get there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But I\u2019m watching headlines about how COVID-19 is spiking\u00a0again in states that have opened up, and I watch grown adults throwing actual\u00a0tantrums<\/em> in public places when they’re expected to wear masks because god forbid they think of anyone other than themselves, and I watch how utterly hapless and out of its\u00a0depth our current leadership is, and I feel like I\u2019m watching a freight train barrel towards us, completely out of control.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So I’m just gonna stay hunkered down here. Maybe for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n

In other news, I just finished line edits for Tidepool<\/em>. After I returned them, I started feeling nostalgic and dug around until I found my very first Draft Zero\u00a0of the novel (originally called\u00a0Blood Tide<\/em>), fresh from the end of November during NaNoWriMo 2016.<\/p>\n

Yeesh. I haven’t been able to make it all the way through the draft because it’s so cringeful, but it really does drive home that getting a draft down, no matter how awful, is critical if you want to have a publishable book some day. The very bad and rough Blood Tide<\/em> became Tidepool,\u00a0<\/em>which I still think is a damn good story. I hope you’ll agree when it’s out.<\/p>\n

As if the first draft wasn’t bad enough on its own, I made a total rookie error which\u00a0seems funny now, but really didn\u2019t back then.<\/p>\n

The character Charlie Sherman was originally called Ted Sherman. At some point before the end of NaNoWriMo 2016, I decided to change his first name. And even though I\u2019ve been through enough office disasters to know better than this, I did a global search and replace on Ted<\/i> to change it to Charlie<\/i>. I didn\u2019t even specify a capitalized T.<\/p>\n

Well. Know how many words end in \u201c-ted?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A WHOLE HELLUVA LOT, that\u2019s how many.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(And holy adverb abuse, Batman! Remember, this was Draft Zero, not even good enough to be the official first draft. This scene is still in the novel but it’s much better now, and not just because all the random Charlies have been rounded up and fed to sea monsters.)<\/p>\n

Also, Tidepool<\/em> now has its own Goodreads page<\/a>, which makes me feel all official and stuff. If you would be kind enough\u00a0to add it to your Want to Read pile, I’d be very appreciative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So. Been a little while since I\u2019ve written, and suddenly a lot has changed. My country as a whole seems…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,44,61,4],"tags":[45,48,9,39,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1039,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions\/1039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}