Blogflog: A Case of Nerves
Jun. 2nd, 2008 08:58 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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lkh_lashoutsEntry: A Case of Nerves
Link: http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2008/05/case-of-nerves.html
Spoilers: None.
Some of you have asked why we aren't going out on tour this week. We usually do the first signing here in St. Louis then the next day we're on a plane to the next stop on the tour. This time, we're waiting a week. Why?
I would assume that it had something to do with scheduling. I mean, it doesn't sound like it's up there with the disappearance of the Roanoke colony as a major mystery.
Two answers, really. One, Charles and his family had scheduled their vacation and couldn't move it,
I find it interesting that LKH doesn't say that Charles and his family had scheduled their vacation during that week, period. She says that they were going on vacation and couldn't move it. I'd bet even money that LKH asked Charles and family to alter the dates they'd be on vacation, too.
when my publisher decided to change the lay down date on BLOOD NOIR.
An Anita Blake book has a "lay down date." *snickerfit* Sorry. I'm twelve.
I requested that we keep the travel on the original week so that Charles could accompany us. The powers that be in New York agreed, and there you have it.
She seems to have skipped over the part where Charles agreed to this.
Second answer, is that when we started looking at events in our everyday life that would be missed if we moved the travel to the new week, this week, there was a long list.
The "long list" is two items long.
Trinity's spring show case. We got to see her do her first solo. Jon and I were very happy we did not miss it.
So happy that she can't even be arsed to tell the troos what kind of solo the kid was doing. Singing? Musical instrument? What?
Tomorrow is Trin's graduation from her grade, and again, glad we're here.
Oh, yeah, she's glad. Check out what she says next!
Though, when I was in school there were no graduations for lower grades. You got one senior year of high school, and maybe eighth grade, and that was it, until college.
LKH is talking about the 1970s and early 1980s--I know this, because she's a year younger than me. I won't say that graduations in the lower grades never happened back then, but they weren't as common.
However...Trinity is thirteen, so she'd probably be graduating from the eighth grade. And there were junior high school graduations even in our youth, LKH! Hell, you just admitted that yourself!
But, these days, you get graduations even from kindergarten.
Hah! I have a book by humorist Sam Levenson called Everything But Money. In it, he complains about graduation ceremonies for kids in nursery school and kindergarten.
The book was written in 1966.
Like I said...less common when LKH was growing up. Not unknown.
Regardless of how I feel about the need for a gradation from the lower grades,
Now I'm picturing Trinity and her classmates passing through various stages to change from one hue, tint or shade to another.
And honestly, hasn't Laurenita made it abundantly clear that she doesn't like the ceremony itself and doesn't want to be there?
I'm still glad to be home to see our daughter go through the ceremony. That whole milestone thing.
Is it me, or does she sound unconvincing and insincere here?
It's funny, if Charles hadn't had the vacation planned, would I have checked in time? Or would I have not thought about it?
My guess is that she wouldn't have thought about it. She's complained numerous times about how she can't even organize things enough to plan a meal.
He is our security, but sometimes on the trips, and now, he's our second look.
I'm not sure what a "second look" is. If Charles only does it sometimes on the trips, though, it makes me wonder how necessary the job of "second look" may be.
That person that helps you check things out a little more completely, so you don't miss the important things.
You mean like a proofreader? Or an editor?
I have to admit when a new book comes out that I get distracted.
I know a lot of writers. I'd be willing to buy that as a straightforward statement. But then she says this:
It makes my absent-minded artist thing a little more intense.
So you see, she's not nervous because she's like any other writer with a new work out there. No. She's nervous because she's an ARTIST, and an intense and absent-minded one at that. Her nervousness only proves that she is a speshul snowflake.
News from New York about how the book is doing comes in, and is exciting and nerve wracking.
Probably more nerve-wracking than exciting. The reviews--at least the online ones--are not good. One to two-star reviews, most of them.
BLOOD NOIR is doing amazingly well.
It's selling, yes. At least a few people on Amazon, however, spoke of buying the book and then bringing it back to the store. I don't know if that gets measured by sales figures.
The news is very good, and very anxiety provoking. Why does good news make me anxious?
I don't know. Maybe you're sensing that the news shouldn't be entirely good?
Just my own little special brand of weird, and not the happy kind.
I'm trying to picture a happy kind of weird. It makes me think of a cheerful Wednesday Addams.
No, the kind that sends you to a therapist or the gym.
Okay, I can see that weirdness that isn't good would send people to therapy. But...the gym?
LKH: "Help! I'm feeling intense and nervous, and the sheer weirdness may drive me to...to EXERCISE!"
I swoon from the sheer horror.
Oh I've promised myself before the next book release we'll have a heavy bag here at home. Right now, I'm so out of practice that I'm afraid I'd sprain a wrist and be unable to sign your books. Which would so suck, so I'll leave the heavy hitting until safely after tour.
Considering that she says that she gets nervous before book releases and tours, punching the heavy bag to release tension after the tour would be rather useless, wouldn't it?
All this to say, that the hoopla around a book release messes with my attention.
*shrug* Stop writing books, then. How many times have you said that you don't enjoy writing anymore and that you feel burned out?
It distracts, teases, torments.
...discomfits, flusters, haunts and vexes. It's nice that she's finally discovered the thesaurus under the Tools menu, isn't it?
I try to ignore it all and keep writing, but I fail. The few days before a book release I'm useless.
Based on these blogposts, she's useless for more than those few days.
I managed to get a few pages written long hand today, but mostly I dither, and call people in New York and use up their time and mine.
The tense changes are giving me whiplash!
I can't sit still. Can't not poke at the whole process. But right this minute, I'm going to bed. Sleep sounds good.
Because going to bed and being asleep doesn't involve being still at ALL. (Well, it doesn't...but somehow I don't think she's equating not sitting still with turning over in her sleep.)
Though the whole nervous energy thing does make actual sleep problematic.
Woe is you! How can you bear the horrific burden of overnight jitters?
Link: http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2008/05/case-of-nerves.html
Spoilers: None.
Some of you have asked why we aren't going out on tour this week. We usually do the first signing here in St. Louis then the next day we're on a plane to the next stop on the tour. This time, we're waiting a week. Why?
I would assume that it had something to do with scheduling. I mean, it doesn't sound like it's up there with the disappearance of the Roanoke colony as a major mystery.
Two answers, really. One, Charles and his family had scheduled their vacation and couldn't move it,
I find it interesting that LKH doesn't say that Charles and his family had scheduled their vacation during that week, period. She says that they were going on vacation and couldn't move it. I'd bet even money that LKH asked Charles and family to alter the dates they'd be on vacation, too.
when my publisher decided to change the lay down date on BLOOD NOIR.
An Anita Blake book has a "lay down date." *snickerfit* Sorry. I'm twelve.
I requested that we keep the travel on the original week so that Charles could accompany us. The powers that be in New York agreed, and there you have it.
She seems to have skipped over the part where Charles agreed to this.
Second answer, is that when we started looking at events in our everyday life that would be missed if we moved the travel to the new week, this week, there was a long list.
The "long list" is two items long.
Trinity's spring show case. We got to see her do her first solo. Jon and I were very happy we did not miss it.
So happy that she can't even be arsed to tell the troos what kind of solo the kid was doing. Singing? Musical instrument? What?
Tomorrow is Trin's graduation from her grade, and again, glad we're here.
Oh, yeah, she's glad. Check out what she says next!
Though, when I was in school there were no graduations for lower grades. You got one senior year of high school, and maybe eighth grade, and that was it, until college.
LKH is talking about the 1970s and early 1980s--I know this, because she's a year younger than me. I won't say that graduations in the lower grades never happened back then, but they weren't as common.
However...Trinity is thirteen, so she'd probably be graduating from the eighth grade. And there were junior high school graduations even in our youth, LKH! Hell, you just admitted that yourself!
But, these days, you get graduations even from kindergarten.
Hah! I have a book by humorist Sam Levenson called Everything But Money. In it, he complains about graduation ceremonies for kids in nursery school and kindergarten.
The book was written in 1966.
Like I said...less common when LKH was growing up. Not unknown.
Regardless of how I feel about the need for a gradation from the lower grades,
Now I'm picturing Trinity and her classmates passing through various stages to change from one hue, tint or shade to another.
And honestly, hasn't Laurenita made it abundantly clear that she doesn't like the ceremony itself and doesn't want to be there?
I'm still glad to be home to see our daughter go through the ceremony. That whole milestone thing.
Is it me, or does she sound unconvincing and insincere here?
It's funny, if Charles hadn't had the vacation planned, would I have checked in time? Or would I have not thought about it?
My guess is that she wouldn't have thought about it. She's complained numerous times about how she can't even organize things enough to plan a meal.
He is our security, but sometimes on the trips, and now, he's our second look.
I'm not sure what a "second look" is. If Charles only does it sometimes on the trips, though, it makes me wonder how necessary the job of "second look" may be.
That person that helps you check things out a little more completely, so you don't miss the important things.
You mean like a proofreader? Or an editor?
I have to admit when a new book comes out that I get distracted.
I know a lot of writers. I'd be willing to buy that as a straightforward statement. But then she says this:
It makes my absent-minded artist thing a little more intense.
So you see, she's not nervous because she's like any other writer with a new work out there. No. She's nervous because she's an ARTIST, and an intense and absent-minded one at that. Her nervousness only proves that she is a speshul snowflake.
News from New York about how the book is doing comes in, and is exciting and nerve wracking.
Probably more nerve-wracking than exciting. The reviews--at least the online ones--are not good. One to two-star reviews, most of them.
BLOOD NOIR is doing amazingly well.
It's selling, yes. At least a few people on Amazon, however, spoke of buying the book and then bringing it back to the store. I don't know if that gets measured by sales figures.
The news is very good, and very anxiety provoking. Why does good news make me anxious?
I don't know. Maybe you're sensing that the news shouldn't be entirely good?
Just my own little special brand of weird, and not the happy kind.
I'm trying to picture a happy kind of weird. It makes me think of a cheerful Wednesday Addams.
No, the kind that sends you to a therapist or the gym.
Okay, I can see that weirdness that isn't good would send people to therapy. But...the gym?
LKH: "Help! I'm feeling intense and nervous, and the sheer weirdness may drive me to...to EXERCISE!"
I swoon from the sheer horror.
Oh I've promised myself before the next book release we'll have a heavy bag here at home. Right now, I'm so out of practice that I'm afraid I'd sprain a wrist and be unable to sign your books. Which would so suck, so I'll leave the heavy hitting until safely after tour.
Considering that she says that she gets nervous before book releases and tours, punching the heavy bag to release tension after the tour would be rather useless, wouldn't it?
All this to say, that the hoopla around a book release messes with my attention.
*shrug* Stop writing books, then. How many times have you said that you don't enjoy writing anymore and that you feel burned out?
It distracts, teases, torments.
...discomfits, flusters, haunts and vexes. It's nice that she's finally discovered the thesaurus under the Tools menu, isn't it?
I try to ignore it all and keep writing, but I fail. The few days before a book release I'm useless.
Based on these blogposts, she's useless for more than those few days.
I managed to get a few pages written long hand today, but mostly I dither, and call people in New York and use up their time and mine.
The tense changes are giving me whiplash!
I can't sit still. Can't not poke at the whole process. But right this minute, I'm going to bed. Sleep sounds good.
Because going to bed and being asleep doesn't involve being still at ALL. (Well, it doesn't...but somehow I don't think she's equating not sitting still with turning over in her sleep.)
Though the whole nervous energy thing does make actual sleep problematic.
Woe is you! How can you bear the horrific burden of overnight jitters?
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