Gone . . . me and the book

But we are going in separate directions.

Flynn and Sara have left the building, having gone off cyberspatially to England (they just look like geese). And I am heading to Alabama in the morning.

I stayed up all night last night making the last three chapters of Flynn and Sara track. I am hoping now that, as grueling as this sort of all-night stuff can be, it's something that will prevent Alzheimers down the road. After all, it was like doing a 30+ hour workout in a mental gym.

I think it's a tighter, tauter, tenser book now. I did what I said I was going to do -- cut aabout 15000 words and added another 10000, streamliniing, sharpening the focus. The editor had some good comments and I hope I did a good job responding to them. I asked a friend to read it the other day, after I'd finished seven chapters of it.

She said, "You rewrote the whole thing!" Um, yes.

It's my job. And it's a better book.

Now I'm packing. At 7 tomorrow morning a friend and I are road-tripping it down to Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama for a week of two intense genealogical and historical research courses. She's taking one on Virginia research and I'm doing an advanced research and analysis course. It's one I've wanted to take for probably five years. I never figured I had the skills to benefit from it before.

Now I hope I do. Anything I learn will be of use. I'm sure it's like writing -- the more you bring to it, the more you'll get out of it. I'm hoping I'm bringing enough.

I'm certainly bringing a lot of brick-wall research problems. I don't expect I will get over them all -- or may not even any of them by the time I get back -- but I do anticipate having better ideas of how to approach them by the time I come home next week.

I should be able to get online during the week, though whether I'll have time to post or not, remains to be seen.

If I hadn't already planned this course, I'd have hopped over to England to help Kate Walker celebrate her 50th book tomorrow. She's having the blog party to end all blog parties on her blog this month -- and next. Be sure to stop by and say hello.

Now that Flynn and Sara are gone (at least I hope they are, though they could certainly reappear for "tweaks"), I will be doing a guest blog there myself. I'll keep you posted.