Thursday, September 17, 2009

Week in the Life of a Soon-to-Debut Author

Tip of the Day: Looking for a special kind of candy? This place has everything.

I thought it would be fun to let you all in on the glitz and glam (ha!) of life as a soon to-debut author. We'll look at my past week.

Thursday: Doing the Mom thing. Receive interview request from a reporter who used to be a barista. OMG, how fun will that interview be? Set up our phone call. Excited! Feeling very guilty that I haven't worked on my work in progress, Pumpkin Princess, in days.

Friday: Mom stuff all day. Determined to get some writing done at night. Stared at laptop for couple of hours. Started at word count 25,003. Ended at 25,223. Kinda pathetic.

Saturday: Box arrives from UPS overnight. I know it's my copyedits for My Fake Boyfriend is Better Than Yours because my editor e-mailed me already and told me it was on the way. I place the box in the office to look at later. So much to do. Two kids have soccer games and for some unknown reason I decided that I needed to have a garage sale today. Oh, and I'm in week three of a nasty cough. Silly me. Games and garage sale go well and it's now evening and kids are hungry. I plead with husband to feed and put them to bed since I feel like I'm dying from my cold. I get a glass of hot water with lemon, turn on a humidifier and intend to take my cranky self to bed. But wait, maybe I should peek into that box and see how the copy edits are. I open the box and OH MY GOD-- my editor included a finished copy of The Espressologist!!! Whoo hoo!





















Must take pics! Must blog! Must dance! Then return to dying from cold.

Sunday: Husband convinces me to cancel garage sale because I'm still feeling blah. Lay in bed all day recovering/doing copyedits. And finish! Hooray!

Monday: Do the song and dance of mommyhood all day. Put the copy edits IN to the envelope to mail tomorrow (that counts for something right?). Suddenly realize I'm only like 6 weeks out until my book releases and I don't have a first launch event/book signing set up yet. Uh oh. Scrambling to come up with ideas. E-mailing everyone for advice. Still sick.

Tuesday: Mommy stuff again but did manage to get to the UPS store and mail the copyedits back. This doesn't seem like a lot but when you're taking 4 little kids with you it's a bit of an adventure. ("Oooh, there's ice cream next store!" "Can we get ice cream?" "What if we're good?" "She hit me!" "He's looking at me!" "I'm thirsty!" "I have to pee!" "The baby ate my lego!" "Why can't we get ice cream?") Ordered stuff from the Internet for launch party. Whenever and whatever that may be. Filled out interviews for blog tour.

Wednesday: Lots of running around with the kids! Man they require a lot of attention. :-) Really want to get back to Pumpkin Princess today but too much on the agenda. Frustrated. Maybe tomorrow. I can't believe a whole week went by and I only wrote 200 words. Feeling the guilt! I did e-mail the CRM at a local bookstore with a proposal for a launch event. Crossing fingers that she says yes! Need to write Author2Author blog...

And here we are. I told you it would be all so very exciting. I'm still mad at myself for not getting more new writing done so that will have to be a goal this week. I'm sorry if I shattered the illusion and you thought all writers woke up late and drank their fancy coffees as they wrote all day in a quiet office with an ocean view, only taking breaks for yoga in the late afternoon. Some probably do. But some are like me and we just squeeze in whatever time we have and try to make the best of it.

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut

4 comments:

amuse me said...

I am excited to walk into a book store and see your first book on the shelf. It has been fun following your journey. :) M

Emily Marshall said...

Tina--you got all your copyedits done? That sounds like progress to me. Yay. Celebrate everything you do (that's why I love checklists--because it feels like a little party each time you get to check one off).

Good luck on finishing everything you want to before your launch. I know it will be smashing.

Lisa Schroeder said...

Sounds like a great list to me! Mine would be - go to work, come home and help with homework, repeated ad nauseum. No writing is happening around here right now either. It's hard getting back into the school groove.

DeenaML said...

Your finished book is glossy and lovely!

Are you still sick? Man, lots of ppl around here have been getting that nasty cough thing, too.

Can't believe the launch date is coming now so soon! And how fast FB is going!