Facebook flog - Feb 20 2014

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Feb 20 2014, 13:36
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's Facebook. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

The deal I made with my editor was that I'd work on the copy edits for, A Shiver of Light, on my birthday, in exchange for getting to have a long weekend over Valentine's Day. I've been too sick to work on them today, but they are waiting on my desk for tomorrow morning. I'll work on the small queries first, and then the minor/major rewrites last, so the page numbers don't change between the printed out copy and the computer file. I have until the 24th to finish and deliver them back to New York.

Do I hear, Mission Impossible, music? Or maybe circus music?

Comments

[fangedsekhmet.livejournal.com]

Wow O_o

Anyone want to place bets on her not meeting that (to my eyes) really short deadline?

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

Four days to rewrite the book?

She's probably not going to even make it through the grammatical edits. Anyone want to take bets on how much blogging and Twittering she does over the next few days? Calling at least one blog entry, then another the morning of the 24th, and... a whole lot of Tweets.

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

If you're too sick to work on your copy edits, then how come you're perfectly fine to surf the internet?

Unless you are hugging the toilet bowl or if your insides are making a bid for independence, then nothing is stopping you from sitting up in bed with your laptop or a printed copy of the manuscript to do your edits. But I get it. The editor is breathing down your neck, tearing apart your masterpiece, and if you dither on your deadline you don't have to make massive changes. Poor you.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

If you're too sick to work on your copy edits, then how come you're perfectly fine to surf the internet?

If it were nearly anyone else, I'd defend them. Surfing the internet and posting on Facebook and etc. don't take brainpower, whereas copy edits do. Writing and editing are difficult or impossible when ill -- surfing the internet is the equivalent of reading a trashy paperback.

But this is LKH. She constantly whines about having to do her cushy job and about the problems that she's caused herself.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

"Too sick" = still massively hungover from Romantic Long Weekend A Quatre?

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

I love how she's conveniently sick right when she's supposed to honor this deal she made with her editor. Reminds me of people who beg you to help them move and promise they'll be there when you need to move, but when it's time to haul boxes they're conveniently sick. And then you catch them shopping downtown.

Also, maybe I'm mean and cynical and awful, but the whole not-so-subtle "it's my birthday" combined with "I'm sick and working hard anyway" with a smattering of "oh no, my deadline is so close and even though it's entirely my fault, I'm going to be a brave little soldier trucking on!" smacks of just...a trifecta of attention-pandering. Normally she only gives us one or two at a time.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Oh man, random pointless anecdote time, but a few times a couple years ago I kept getting sick RIGHT when I promised people I'd hang out/help out/etc. I felt like the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD because the timing was uncanny and I just knew they thought I was faking it (well, my friends know I have Crohn's disease, but still). :-P Thankfully I managed to make it up to those people, but it was just awful and embarrassing and I hated it.

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

Oh man, that sucks. But at least you had a valid reason and aren't actually one of those people, and I'm sure your friends love you for caring enough to want to make it up to them. I'm sure they weren't thinking you were faking it at all. <3

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

That's one of the worst things about people like LKH. They make it that much harder for people who actually do get sick a lot or have other disabilities.

[okami-no-yume.livejournal.com]

Laurell, I think you're hearing the circus music because you're such a fucking assclown.

I am truly astonished that the publisher still puts up with her and her shenanigans. I fully expected them to cut her loose years ago.

So you're too sick to work on edits, but not too sick to post on Facebook, huh Lala?

Oh, I can only imagine the hissy fit when her ass IS finally dropped. It shall be glorious.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Short answer, she still sells well enough to make enough profit. However since she completed 10 book deal the perks have not been as forthcoming...they are not being as careful with her release dates and they are not springing for things like ads in trades, ARC's for reviewers, and comping her for tours ect.

[rekallthegreat.livejournal.com]

She's a fucking adult. She should have sucked it up, worked Valentine's Day and her birthday (like anyone else would at their job) and then go on vacation afterwards. She's acting like a child who doesn't want to go to school on their birthday so they make a deal with their parent to take another day off instead.

[collectively.livejournal.com]

Personally, I hear ominous string music at the thought of yet another book of hers rushed to publication with entirely too little editing done on it.

(I'm blaming her for this, btw, not her editors.)

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

If she scheduled her time in a halfway sensible way, she would have any weekend off she chose and be able to have her birthday off if she wanted to as well. And you know, Laurell, most people do not get their birthdays off after they start school unless their birthday happens to fall on a weekend that year. Not when they're children and not when they're adults.

[elialshadowpine.livejournal.com]

Uh... wow. Okay, so the being sick and posting online doesn't bother me too much, but what in the fucking world with the whole making of deals with her actual editor for which days to work on edits? o.O

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

Oh my God! That poor copy editor! Not LKH, but whoever had to work with her. She only shipped the book out what, 2 weeks ago? That is not enough time to really scrub a 500 page book clean.

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to have the opinion that whoever the copy editor is they must be amazing to have that turnaround time with the full knowledge that this might be the only crack at it they get. That person deserves a raise.

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

And for all of us "haters" to send them all the gift baskets of alcohol, chocolate, personal spa items, etc that we can scrounge up and afford. Because Jesus Christ.

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

Wait, when she was bragging about finishing that was the first draft?
SERIOUSLY?
My horn is swoggled.

[clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com]

Of COURSE not.

"I never worked in drafts. I never sat down and wrote a 'first draft' of anything. I wrote only through slow and polished and highly edited evolution, discarding as I went along until --- by the very end -- I had a completed and polished and deeply thought out and, above all, deeply felt and executed manuscript. One version of that manuscript existed, and nothing more. There was never a sloppy first draft or second draft or third draft."

...oh wait, that was Anne Rice. I'm getting my self-important, wanky vampire fetishists mixed up again.

Sadly, I tried, but couldn't find LKH's quote about how 90% of what she writes is "gold" now.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

She does claim to edit as she goes. LaLa, that is. I'm sorry to say that I don't remember when she made the vaunted "90% gold" claim. Though it was on her blog not on Facebook.

[clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com]

AHA, found it!

Don’t Let Perfectionism Stop You (http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/2012/08/dont-let-perfectionism-stop-you/), August 4, 2012:

"Perfection, if it exists, comes with editing that rough stuff into finished product. When I talked to the woman who would be my first agent, her first question was, “How many drafts of your first novel have you done?” My reply, “Seven.” That was an answer that let her know I was serious and not caught in the perfection trap. I went home and did one more edit of my first novel and sent it off. Months later she’d take me on as a client, and I had an agent. It would take almost four years for the book to hit the shelves, but that’s another story. The point is that writing, good, professional writing is rewriting.
I’ve now written over thirty novels and my garbage quotient has gotten lower just by practice and knowing my craft. Some first drafts are 80% gold and only 20% garbage, but not always. Sometimes it’s more like 50/50. It just depends on the book. I routinely throw out hundreds of pages in a book, winnowing it down through edits and that’s before it ever leaves me and goes to New York for my editor to read."

Uh... huh...

Funny how this paragraph mirrors her history: starts out good, veers into "WHAT?!" territory out of nowhere.

[jeza-red.livejournal.com]

My mind still boggles about the notion of making a deal with her editor about making sure that HER book that SHE wrote and that SHE is supposed to care about being good enough to publish is good enough to publish... and still finding excuses not to do it.
Am I seeing things wrong, but isn't it the author who's supposed to be the one that cares the most about their work? The one that wants the audience to love reading their stuff? Isn't it?

*reaches for smelling salts*

[mocha-latta.livejournal.com]

When I read that she was sick, my first thought was "that's strange, she doesn't have a deadline looming." Then I immediately felt bad about being so catty and judgemental.
Then this pops up.
Right.
'Edits'

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

I knew it! I knew she had to have SOME deadline looming with the Sudden Illness of Doom that is Doomy!

I've joked about it before, but I feel sorry for her editor. Especially since this book is over a year overdue...

My inner fan is weeping for the last shreds of the Merry series's dignity, but my inner snarker is rejoicing at the pile of zombie fish in a barrel this book will become. It will spork itself.