Sick, and tired

It is that fucking time of the year. I have a head cold. I don't know if you remember but last year, at this time, I fell in a heap. Had laryngitis, couldn't teach my final sessions for the year, and it then moved into my chest, then up to the sinuses. I am hoping this head cold just stays in the head then fucks off without spreading anywhere else.

I'm trying to rest as much as possible.

P came back from her beach sojourn yesterday, she had a ball. At one stage there were 19 of them all in a house, having fun cooking together, chatting, playing games, swimming. I remember being young and in a big group and how much fun it was.

On Friday P has laser surgery on her eyes. She's worn glasses since she was about 5 or 6 and contacts since about 11 or so. She is so over them, so on Friday her eyes will be lasered and hopefully she will have good eyesight, at least for a number of years before they start to deteriorate again.

Today is Clokes's daughter's bd, she is 19. Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be older than that. December is filled with family and friends birthdays, it's kind of annoying. But anyway.

I've got the contract from the publisher, have worked my way through making notes. Will talk to agent this week. Things have been slowed of course: for two weeks agent and pub were each expecting the other to send it through. Hah. And then it's just been the Thanksgiving weekend in the US so nothing has happened from that end.

So many delays. I can't imagine how non-patient people cope. I have a friend who also writes, she's a bit behind me in the process. She is so impatient. She is already talking about self-publishing and she hasn't even submitted it to publishers; and has submitted it to maybe two agents and gotten good feedback but ultimate knock backs. She is going to drive herself mental if she can't find some patience and the ability to sit with ambiguity, be still with uncertainty. Also it astounds me how people don't realise that to get published you have to submit, and submit to a shitload of places, and often over a long period of time. We all have stars in our eyes that we will be the one who snaps it in a single go. I'd like to know how often that happens, out of all the traditionally-published authors, how many approached one agent, say, and they took them on. Or one publisher and they said yes. Because if the amount of published novelists (traditionally) sits at 1 in a thousand manuscripts (I've seen publishers say they think that's way too high) then of that amount, what percentage have had a 'smooth run' ie 1 for 1 in terms of pitches.

So my head is hot and I'm going back to bed. My final teaching is tomorrow, two hours in the middle of the day. My voice is holding up so far, I think I'll be okay. And then I'm off for the summer, yay.

Oh, and I wrote 3,000 new words last week, which is pretty good considering I hadn't worked on that project for months. So I'm about 3K off my target for completed first draft. Also need to go back to the first one, and rewrite, but that will be a big project. So want to get this shorter one done first so it's ready to show pub when the time comes. Then if I have two in the pipeline it buys me time to get the third one how I want it.

What are people's plans for the summer? Anyone doing a big Christmas? A small Christmas? A no Christmas?