1. Schools here are closed again today! That’s three snow days in a row, folks. And there are towns nearby where things are significantly worse. Several of my relatives are basically ice-bound. I am very, very grateful that I get to work from home these days!
2. In case you haven’t heard, the American Library Association announced their big awards this week! I haven’t read THE GRAVEYARD BOOK yet, but after talking with three people whose opinions I value immensely I have to say that it is now very, very high on my to-read list!
2.a. I’d like to say a special THANK YOU to all of the people who essentially gave up a year of their lives to serve on the selection committees for these awards. A good friend of mine was on the Newbery committee this year, and I have new respect for the effort, energy, and concern that goes into this process. So on behalf of authors everywhere, thank you!
3. Do you guys know what bloglines.com is? I have an account and, basically, you tell it what blogs you like and it tells you any time someone has updated that blog and actually shows you what the new post says. It’s awesome.
But lately I guess it’s been acting up. There were some posts that weren’t getting updated and I’ve been too busy to really notice the essential radio silence from some of my favorite bloggers until yesterday when I clicked over to see if I had any updates and…whoa.
27 posts from John Green!
18 posts from Sarah Dessen!
42 posts from Maureen Johnson!
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love all of these authors, but I’m thinking that it’s going to take me a while to catch up.
4. Yesterday I put GG3 in the FedEx box to send back to New York for the final time. Which means even though the book won’t be ready for shelves until June (there’s still A LOT of work that A LOT of people have to do before then) my part of it is finished. Over. I will never again get to change a single word of it, and this makes me feel very, very sad. And very, very liberated. Both.
-Ally
ps…before you ask, let me remind you that writing a book is just one part of MAKING a book.
Sure, GG3 has been written and rewritten and copyedited and type-set and copyedited again, but the book still has to be re-typeset (to incorporate all the last-minute changes and corrections) and presumably shipped to some printer somewhere. And then printed and bound and shipped to warehouses and then shipped to stores and…you know…stuff.
So no. The fact that I put the edited galley pages in the FedEx box does not mean that the book will be ready before June 9, 2009. I wish it meant that. But it doesn’t.
There’s still A LOT of work to do. We’re simply at the point where I will not be the person doing it.
