I spent much of yesterday doing a scene-by-scene outline of the book so I could remind myself of what I’d written. I can already see things I want to fix before I even start digging into my editor’s suggestions. I think most of this work is going to be fine-tuning and amping up some aspects. I’m still not sure how extensive it really will be.

Strangely, this process has made me feel better about the book I was working on because I’d just gone through this process with the parts I’d written of that book, and when I analyzed those scenes, there was so much more going on. I have scenes in this book that have very little purpose or that have the same purpose as several other scenes, so I either need to add stuff or combine scenes.

Meanwhile, tonight is my last real session of children’s choir. The kids sing Sunday, and then there’s a program next Wednesday night, but this is the last time I have to have any kind of plans. I’m not sure how many kids I’ll end up with because it’s a rainy day. Sometimes that means they’ve been cooped up all day and the parents want them out of the house, so we have a big group. Sometimes that means no one wants to go out in the bad weather, and we have a small group. Last week, there was a threat of severe storms (that didn’t actually happen) and I had two kids. So I guess I’ll wing it. But it will be nice having that one responsibility off my shoulders.

Which is good because I’ve got a lot of other responsibilities right now. So, off to work!

It turns out that it’s a good thing I was in a regrouping mode on this book because I just got revision notes on my book for Audible, and I’ve got about a month to get those rewrites done. That’s going to require some abrupt gear shifting. At least I’m not interrupting any serious momentum. I’m going to have to reread the book because it’s been so long since I worked on it that I don’t even remember much about it. Which is good, in a way, because it means I’m not stuck on whatever I wrote before, so it’ll be easier to change it.

And doing these revisions may give me ideas for what I can do with other books. Every time I work with an editor, I learn something new that makes my writing better overall. I’m a bit weird in that I like revisions because I like feeling like I’m making the book better.

But this does mean I’ll be very busy for the next few weeks. I want to get the revisions done before I go to the Nebula weekend so I can then give it another pass and proofread afterward.

Now to go reread my book so I can remember it.

I made it through Easter weekend. I don’t have a lot of voice left, but I get a break this week because the choir isn’t singing Sunday. My children’s choir is, so I still have to deal with it, but I don’t have to use my voice (other than for scolding naughty kids). I’ve also already done the post-Easter Target chocolate run, and I seem to have been over-eager about that because the discount wasn’t yet in the system and the cashier had to do it manually.

Now for the rest of the day I need to settle in and get caught up on things. The to-do list is getting intimidating.

I’m still working out what the rest of this book needs to be, finding plot reasons for the “wouldn’t it be cool if …” scenes, working the new characters who’ve come up during writing into the already planned scenes. I think part of my problem is that my original plan didn’t actually have any conflict through most of the story, until we got near the end and found out what was really going on. I need to find a way to bring some of that conflict forward. That’s really tricky because I was kind of enjoying just going along and discovering things. I like low-conflict stories. Unfortunately, you can’t really sell those. I need to find a middle ground between “just enjoying this interesting place and these people” and “everyone is in mortal peril and the fate of the entire world is at stake.”

I actually had to put a book I was reading this weekend down because it was too much for me. The characters kept doing dumb things, sometimes for good reasons, and sometimes for Reasons (because the author needed it for the plot to work), and I just couldn’t take it. It didn’t help that a lot of the dumb things involved gambling, and for some reason, that’s a real hot button for me. I can’t deal with stories about gambling. I’m not sure why. I guess I just think it’s a huge waste of money. Gamblers enjoy it because they feel like they’re going to win and come out ahead, but I see it as you’re most likely to lose it all, so it’s not fun, and it’s stressful to read about. The book description did mention gambling, but I thought it was mostly the setup, and it turned out to be the core of the story.

Meanwhile, I suspect there will be a lot of stress knitting going on during next week’s Game of Thrones episode. I almost can’t bear to watch. I wonder if maybe I should wait and read spoilers and then watch so I can brace myself.

So, yeah, I need to moderate my risk aversion in order to get a good story, even if I don’t have to take it quite that far.

I’m coming up to a really busy phase. This weekend is Easter weekend, and I’ve got a lot of singing to do.

Meanwhile, I’m working on communications for the Nebula Awards weekend for SFWA, so I’m doing a lot of admin-type work, relaying info to people and coordinating things.

And I’m trying to get some writing done, making slow progress on the book as I try to figure things out. The book that comes into being once you start writing is often very different from the book that exists in your head before you start writing, and reconciling those two books is often a challenge. I’ve found that I have vivid scenes in my head that no longer fit into the book that develops once I’ve started writing. It takes some effort to find out how those scenes could fit. Sometimes, they have to go. They may be lovely, but they no longer have anything to do with the story.

I’m also still gradually working on clearing out and organizing my office. I’ve found actual floor area. It’s very exciting. I’ve also realized just how many books I have. I got my bookcases organized and even had some extra space — and then I found the boxes of books in my closet. Most of those books fall into the “to be read” category, so I need to start reading from the TBR pile more often. But at the same time, I’m trying to read more current books to stay on top of what’s being published. It’s a real dilemma. I think I’m going to ruthlessly cull the TBR books down to only those I have any interest in ever reading.

So, that’s my life until late May. The choir stuff will ease up after this weekend, and then I’ll finish children’s choir on May 1. I guess it’s just the next couple of weeks that are going to be super crazy. The office organization may have to move more slowly until things ease up. I just want to keep making progress.

I had a really hard time concentrating yesterday after we got news of the Notre Dame fire. I kept checking the news to see what the status was. I’m so glad it wasn’t quite as bad as it seemed it might be. They’d already removed a lot of the sculptures on the roof and spire because of the renovations, the spire was from the Victorian era and not original, and they seem to have saved the main structure, the rose windows, and the bell towers, along with the organ and the art and relics. But still, the damage is heartbreaking and distressing.

I feel a little guilty that one of my first thoughts upon hearing the news was to be glad that I’d seen the cathedral for myself already, but I suspect I’d have felt worse if I’d never seen it and I knew I’d never get to see it.

When we lived in Germany, we took a day trip to Paris one Valentine’s Day. We caught a tour bus around midnight, drove through the night, arrived in Paris in time for an early breakfast, spent the day there, left after dinner, and got home around midnight. Our first stop after breakfast was the cathedral. It was daylight, but the disc of the sun hadn’t really come over the horizon yet, so it was that gray, flat kind of light. Then the sun came up fully while we were inside the cathedral, and it was like all those windows exploded with light and color. That was the memory that kept coming back to me yesterday while we were awaiting the news about how bad the loss might be.

The other thing I found myself thinking about, oddly enough, was the time travel books by Connie Willis. There’s a short story, “Firewatch,” about a time traveler trying to help save St. Paul’s during the Blitz, and then that comes up again in the novels Blackout and All Clear, which are also about the Blitz. The time travelers are from a future in which St. Paul’s was destroyed in a terrorist attack, so getting to see the cathedral still standing is meaningful to them when they travel in time. I was thinking about that yesterday, that there might be people in the future who wish they’d had a chance to see Notre Dame as it was.

Then there was all the stuff about the destruction of Coventry Cathedral in To Say Nothing of the Dog, with the time travelers realizing they could save the artworks and relics since they were lost to history. Now the future has them, and they’re rebuilding a replica of the cathedral, based on observations by time travelers. The book mentions the theory that it was actually the Victorian-era renovations that caused the cathedral to fall, that if it had been left alone it might not have been totally destroyed. I don’t know how accurate that is, but since a lot of the destruction at Notre Dame involved things rebuilt during the 19th century, I had to wonder.

But the cathedral has been rebuilt before, many times. It may have been started in the 12th century, but it’s been added to, damaged, and rebuilt over and over again over the years. I just hate to see beautiful things damaged and destroyed.

I finally got past the tricky scene and not only have moved forward but have gone back to seeing the movie of upcoming scenes in my head, so I seem to have broken my block. I’m not sure why that one scene was so hard. It was what I was working on when I had my little meltdown last month, so maybe I associated it with that. Or it was just that I’d done so much planning for the beginning and got past the part I’d planned. Plus, I’d planned something else, realized that was wrong, and I wasn’t sure how to get back on track once the plans changed.

I’m going into a really busy week, so I’m not going to push myself too hard. I’ve got a big choir rehearsal tomorrow to get ready for all our Good Friday music, my kids are singing Sunday morning, there’s more rehearsing Wednesday, then we’re doing the Faure Requiem Friday night, more rehearsing Saturday, then three services Sunday. And then I will collapse.

This will probably be the week when I get editorial revision notes on my book for Audible.

I’m also gearing up for the Nebula Awards Conference next month. I’m helping with some of the preparation, and it looks like this will be the time when all the proofreading begins.

Meanwhile, I started tackling the upstairs in my ongoing organization project. It has become the place where I stash things as I organize the downstairs. When I got wi-fi, I started moving around the house to work and quit using my office so much, so the office got out of control. I aim to take the office back. I’d like to go back to working up there because I think it will help me stay more focused. I also want to have things organized because that will save me a lot of time in looking for things.

Yesterday, I got through one of the closets, and guess what I found? More candles. Seriously, it’s an issue. I also found some Christmas stuff I forgot I had. I’m putting all the holiday decor together in one spot, all the sewing/knitting stuff together, etc., which should make life easier in the future. It may take me a couple of weeks of half-hour daily sessions, but if I do this thoroughly and deliberately instead of just stashing things elsewhere, it may actually stick.

Thinking about those (mostly British) “my life fell apart, so I moved to a picturesque village and opened a bookstore/cafe/bakery” books, I was pondering what I’d do in that situation, assuming that hiding in a house somewhere and writing books wasn’t an option. I don’t think it would work in a village, but in a decent-sized city, I think I’d want to open a female-oriented science fiction/fantasy bookstore.

My experience with specialty bookstores, or even general bookstores leaning toward genre, in that area hasn’t been all that great. They tend to be very “guy” spaces. They smell kind of nasty and are fully of creepy customers, and sometimes creepy owners/employees. They can be hostile to girls and women, either playing the “you’re a fake geek girl if you can’t answer my obscure trivia questions” game or drooling all over themselves at the thought of a girl who reads fantasy, so you get treated like a unicorn.

So, do a sf/f bookshop along the lines of some of those romance bookshops, focusing on fantasy, science fiction, paranormal romance, and maybe mysteries. It would be decorated nicely and smell good. There would be a tea shop, so you could hang out and drink tea and read the books you just bought. There might be special themed tea events, as well. Host book discussion groups, maybe some “girls’ night out” game nights. Story times with children’s books (to hook new fans). Maybe throw in some other girl geek type activities, like knitting/crocheting groups, possibly sell yarn on commission from local fiber artists who spin/dye.

Men would be welcome, since you can’t discriminate, but the idea would be to create a comfort zone for women where they don’t have to worry about being hit on, creeped on, challenged for their geek credentials, patronized, or any of the other stuff we have to deal with in geeky spaces. Anyone behaving like that would be asked to leave.

This is highly unlikely to ever happen because it would involve dealing with people on a daily basis, and that’s just not me, plus it would require large amounts of money to start something like this, but if someone wants to run with the idea, feel free and invite me to do a signing.