Shhhh...

(My brother says I'm fully qualified to say that now that I have my library science degree.)

I'm trying to be veddy, veddy quiet while I finish this thing up. Maybe 10 more pages? I even experimented with a query letter last night for fun, and sent it to five guinea pigs for their gut reactions. Haven't heard back from anyone yet. Is it kosher to count rejections based on fake query letters when trying to prove you're a "real writer" to the IRS? ;) Just kidding. Really!

Of course, I know much revising is ahead (although I tend to revise as I go along--when I'm stuck, I go backwards for a while), but it's fun to be able to write a synopsis and know it actually does happen in the book.

I've found a boo-boo I made when outlining this story, which became a series when I realized I had a lot more fun material than could efficiently go in one relatively short book. The "big ending" I had in mind can't happen until the end of the last book in the series, so now I need a more dramatic conclusion and probably a small cliffhanger for this part. Oops. I'm going to be taking a lot of long showers over the next few days, I can tell.

So, for me, perhaps the middle has not been as difficult as the end, but it is a good lesson learned. That's precisely what I had in mind when I started writing this less "serious" manuscript. I wanted to finish fairly quickly (oops), finish well, relax and have a little fun, and get some "lessons learned" under my belt.

On an interesting note, my brand-new 7th grader came in and announced that she was going to have to do something at school this year, and was a little leery about it (although she's really good at fake leeriness, because I'm convinced nothing really scares her). Well, what do you know, I had just recently finished a scene in the TF manuscript that is EXACTLY ABOUT WHAT SHE WAS TELLING ME!!!! I mean, down to some very specific details. I haven't even been a seventh grader for um...lots of years, and had no idea I was so close.

I felt so successful for a few minutes--I had somehow managed to do something very right. I stopped right then and had her read the scene, and she was laughing out loud and told me it was very "real." I was so prouda me. You will have to wait until you read it to find out what I'm talking about. Nyah. :)

See you on the other side of "The End" (Lord willin' and the buzzards don't rise, as my dad once said with what I fear is a genetic propensity for mixing and matching colloquialisms and figures of speech. I do it unintentionally all the time.)