Back to (What Passes For) Normal…
Hello everyone! I’m back from holiday travel (visiting family in the Pacific Northwest), and I’m *almost* through excavating the piles and piles and piles of stuff that came in when I was gone. In an effort to get back on track, I’ll share just a few bullet points about things I learned over the past several days:
- It is possible to complete copy edits in three days, to meet a publisher’s unexpected deadline. And to return them, on paper, even when the lines at the post office are more than 1.5 hours long. Even after having sworn not to stand in those lines for the remainder of the year. (FedEx to the rescue – a few more bucks, but much more sanity!)
- We no longer have “starfish” and “jellyfish” filling our oceans. Instead, we have seastars, and jellies. And any five-year-old in kindergarten will vehemently correct you if you use the old, outdated terms. Corollary: World energy shortages could be resolved if we could figure out how to harness the forces that drive five- and three-year-old boys.
- Too-short thumbs on photographer mittens can be fixed before gifts are given. (And now it can be told: the holiday knitted gifts were said photographer mittens, one pair of fingerless mitts, and a bulky cabled earwarmer/headband.)
- Purchasing raingear really does prevent rain (first, during our trip to Rome, now during our trip to the Pacific Northwest – during December, no less.) Not to fear – it is pouring here today, and my raincoat helped keep me dry as I ran a jillion errands to fill our larder and get us back on track.
- Cross-country flights on Christmas Eve really can turn out to be the smoothest, least-problematic flights that one has ever taken. (We returned home with *zero* flight delays, *zero* unscheduled stopovers in Midwest cities, *zero* lost luggage, and *zero* shuttle/taxi delays on the home end — for the first time in nearly five years of travel on this route!)
I’m sure that I’m missing lots and lots of stuff. For now, though, I’ll just conclude that it was wonderful visiting with family, and it’s great to be home. I’m looking forward to settling back into normal patterns for the new year!
Mindy, certain she’ll remember more must-be-posted items, as soon as she clicks on “publish”
Shout out to getting the copyedit done! It’s practically a cliche that the copyeditors and the authors get their proofs over a major holiday. At my old job my (not very sadistic) boss used to say with a grim smile “Happy Thanksgiving!” as he handed the copyeditor a 300-page manuscript in terrible condition. The publishing season waits for no woman.
I *do* find it frustrating that so many holidays have been upset over so many years. I understand that the publishing season must move forward, and I ***totally*** get wanting one’s own desk to be clear before leaving for vacation, but the absurd deadlines set by some editors… (I mean, really, *who* is going to be in the office, type-setting changes that arrive on 12/26? Isn’t that really going to sit there until the new year?!?)
All of that grumbling said, the publishing world is like every other – there are known and predictable “glitches”, and we shouldn’t be surprised when they appear. When I was a litigator, I knew that my Decembers would be very slow. When I worked on transactional matters, though, I knew that December would be *nuts* as we tried to hit year-end deadlines.
Happy new year!