deadline
[note #48]
My friends,
This is how the year ended: I got a draft of this book I’ve been working on to my agent the day before I went under the knife (or, more accurately, the robot fingers) for some minor surgery.
It was a couple weeks before Thanksgiving.
Some part of me assumed I would die on the operating table, so I wanted my posthumous book to be in the best shape possible. To make it easier for my literary executor (whoever that might be) to lightly polish it and send it out into a grieving world.
My agent got some notes back to me a couple weeks later. I assumed it would be a short note, just to let me know he’d sold the book already for a lot of money. Maybe just a word or two on how much he loved it.
That wasn’t what happened. As I scrolled the draft on my phone I saw he’d crossed out page after page from the first section—nearly the entire first section was gone. The first section, which I’d spent perhaps the most time crafting to near perfection. No explanation, just line-through cross-outs.
Since you’re reading this, I assume you’ve gotten feedback before on your writing (if you haven’t yet, brace yourself). It has happened to me enough by now that I know to just let it sit for a while before responding, to let my sense of injustice and outrage fade.
