So Alison has made a post that really reverberates with me.

This last book was HORRIBLY frustrating because I’d had the book and the characters in my head for a long time, and my editor wasn’t enthusiastic about what I started with. She loved the writing and the tension and (of course) the sex, but she wanted two VERY fundamental changes. She wanted not just a plot but A Plot. Now, some of my books have plots. Others (some of them being my very favorites!!!) don’t. Most of my readers don’t seem to give much of a damn about my plots–they’d be perfectly happy if my characters were in an empty locked room and just talked and had sex, with the plots entirely in their heads. But my editor really likes plots, and that meant a major revision of the plot, as it had stood. She also wanted Colin to be a lot more alpha than he began as (rather than merely a bored aristocrat), which pretty much eviscerated what my sense of the book was. And when I already know what a book is and have to totally change that, well, it’s incredibly hard.

Which meant, basically, that my muse and I had a knock-down drag-out fight over this book, and that was after the last book didn’t exactly go so well, muse-wise, either.

I beat the bitch, but she took prisoners–about four chapters, actually. Once I turned in the book, I set it entirely aside and tried to forget about it as much as possible because I needed to be as fresh as I could for the revisions. These came with the predictable content (more plot earlier!!! *g*), but while I was fine with the changes my editor wanted, they weren’t the ones that I felt were really important to the book. The fact that my hero turned utterly colorless and boring for several chapters were of far more consequence to me! And the fact that my tone slipped and the descriptive writing turned to crap, with meaningless space-filling adjectives and the whole bit.

Anyhow, revisions are going great, so the crappy bits won’t hit the shelves. And for all you who want longer endings–well, you’re getting your way in this book. I like things to be so tight at the end that they squeak, but I was a little uncertain about my ending for this book, and considering the complaints about my endings feeling too abrupt, I figured that if *I* was uncertain about how fast it wrapped up, readers would be just flat howling. *g* And howling Isn’t Good.

So I’ve worked up a MUCH better way to work with my editor, which I’ll likely continue with future editors and which keeps me from getting shut into this kind of corner, where the book I have in my head and the book my pub house wants are irreconcilable. (Third time’s a charm, or something like that?) That way, I’m not utterly crippled while writing, which is a Very Good Thing. So the book after this is coming out quite fun, with an integral plotty plot that won’t eat up too much of my page count and a deliciously dark and gothic feel that simply amazes me that it’s WORKING. It isn’t hard to make a crumbling manor gothic. It isn’t hard to make a masque gothic. But it is INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT to make a society parlor party gothic–at least, until now! How to do it came to me like a bolt of electricity to my brain. And it made me feel like I’d been a thorough going idiot before.

Now I think I can make just about anything gothic! Okay, boring middle class houses are going to continue to be blasted difficult to handle, but I did say *just* about anything.

To give you some idea, I woke up on Friday morning at 7:30 AM.

The next time I went to sleep was 10 PM Saturday night. Until then, I was doing hard physical labor doing last minute fine tuning and cleaning up the house and yard in preparation for the move.

Then, at 2AM Sun morning, I was up again, and I worked until I finished the house at 9PM Sunday night. The most exciting part? Planting @#$# flowers in the middle of a thunderstorm with a digging stick because, apparently, I’d already packed my little shovel.

Yeah. Not recommended.

I was too wired to sleep, so I drove until 10:45PM, when I pulled over at a rest stop and slept until 4:20AM.

Then I drove until I got tired and pulled in to a hotel to sleep in Indianapolis at 11PM Mountain/1AM Eastern. I slept until 5:30AM MST/7:30 EST and then drove the rest of the way to Maryland.

Whew.

The last two nights, I’ve slept 12 hrs each. And today, I had a 2 hour nap. It’s nice to have my old body back, though. I never could have done this four years ago.

I lost 5 lbs in 3 wks, too. And I don’t lose weight easily. I lost only a lb a week while nursing, for instance. So I’m now a regular 6 instead of a fat 6/skinny 8, but I have to make sure I don’t lose any more so my body doesn’t freak out and decide that I’m starving to death.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!