Jennifer Brown

Other than the fact that I put off working on my first pass pages until the last possible minute (I'm trying to knock off this blog post real quick before heading to the post office... got 35 minutes... I'm still good as long as the lights are green), which is SO unlike me, I actually found the process quite awesome.

It's weird to read your book as a "book." Especially some of the parts that were changed in the rewrites process and were written in a time crunch and sent off without my usual anal-perfectionistic critical eye (the one that insists on accounting for each word a thousand times over and keeps me up at night). I'd look at some of those parts and go, Whoa, I don't remember writing that. I liiiiike it. Awesome!

This marks the... let's see... ninth? eleventh? time I've read my book. I haven't even read Grapes of Wrath that many times. Cripes, I haven't even read Atlas Shrugged that many times, and I named my kid after that one!

I can't help but wonder... do writers read their books again when they come out as an actual book? Will I? Hell, I'll probably be able to recite it by then. Well. Readings will be easy, yes?

So I'm off to the post office, for the second time in as many days feeling very in tune with writing. Yesterday was spent in Lawrence, KS, at the Langston Hughes Birthday Party and reading of the winners of the Creative Writing Awards. Very cool. Pics to follow. Maybe tomorrow. When my eyes aren't bugging out of my head and I'm not having to calculate the minutes it'll take me to get through that one stoplight at the intersection where the post office is. Crap, I gotta get outta here!

But I'm floating, man. Just floating. First pass pages are done and I hear... The ARCs are comin'! The ARCs are comin'!