Ha! I Made My Deadline After All!

Well, I suppose I’m nothing if not amazing under pressure!

After last night’s blog post, I promptly took a nap because I was exhausted (one of the reasons I figured I was not going to make my deadline; that and the expanded story).  Then, as many writers do, I woke up at eleven-thirty at night and realized I was wide awake.

Well, since I was awake, I might as well write, I figured.  And suddenly the idea came for me of a place to end the story, at least for now.  Sure, there’s still a whole book in the thing, but I found a spot that seemed like a good place to cut it for the moment.  And lo and behold, I was just starting the big fight at the climax.  Maybe there was still time!  The story wasn’t due in until the 3oth, and it was the 29th, so why not?

I double-checked the website for the submission guidelines, and just to make things more interesting, I suddenly realized that the pay was in Australian dollars.  Oh shit! I said to myself.  What time is it in Australia?

I looked it up.  By now it was 5:30 pm in Australia (I assume in Sydney) on the 30th of April.

So away I went.  And I wrote like a crazy woman, and I did about twice my normal daily word count.  I was putting the finishing touches on the formatting as the sun came up and the birds started twittering in the trees.  It was 6:30 am Pacific — 11:30 pm in Sydney — when I hit “send” on the submission email.

So I made it.  Barely.  I can already think of some mistakes I made in the edit, and my partner who does all my editing didn’t even get a chance to look at it . . . but it’s done.  And it’s in.

Now I guess we’ll see!  If it makes the anthology, great!  If not, regardless, I have a book that’s off to a tightly-plotted good start that I believe has some real potential.

Go ahead, laugh at me.  I don’t blame you!

Oh yeah: also, I’m a winner at Camp NaNoWriMo.  Yay for me!