My Editor Totally Rocks; My Book is Listed for Sale; My Son Survived His First Week in Middle School: It's Friday and It's A GOOD Thing!

Woo Hoo! It's Friday and I have survived the first week of school and a new schedule, and better yet, my son survived his first week in middle school.

Can I tell you how scared I was for him? Not that middle school was that traumatic for me or anything. Actually, I think it was pretty okay. I wouldn't want to go back and relive it or anything, but I managed fine.

But it's a totally different thing to send your kid in there. With all the horror stories. And with eighth graders who have a five o'clock shadow at seven in the morning, are a foot taller than me, and look like they could play football for a college team. When did 13 and 14 year olds get so big??

So yeah, I was worried. My son? Not so much. We talked about peer pressure last week, and he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "I don't really care what other people think about me." And he doesn't! But still, the bus didn't show up on the first day of school and he had to walk in 20 minutes late to his first class. Then he misread his schedule and sat in gym for 10 minutes before realizing he was suppose to be in a different class. And when he got to lunch there were no seats left and he didn't know a soul and didn't hardly get to eat a bite of lunch.

His whole second day I worried. What if he couldn't find his classes again? What if he had to eat his lunch alone in a phone booth somewhere? What if someone called him names or shoved him against the locker?

But I didn't need to worry because his best friend, the only one in the entire school he knows, ended up being on our bus route, and they sat together on the way to school and discovered they had lunch almost at the same time and arranged a place to meet and eat together. And he made it to all of his classes. And he loves his teachers. And he's made a new friend in his class. And today is UpRoar - his very first all-school pep rally thingy, and he is over the moon about it.

I'm learning to let go a little, and to realize I've done an okay job raising him. He's going to be all right.

In writing news, there are other good things.

I discovered yesterday my publisher has my book listed on their website as "coming soon"!!! It's official! My name, my book - listed on the website for anyone to see. Along with a "pre-order now" button. I guess the next big thing will be my cover. I still have to pinch myself and whisper, This is really happening...

But it's not ready yet. There is still editing to do. Which is what I've been doing this week. And I'd like to say for the record that my editor totally rocks. Her name is Nadene, and I didn't formally meet her until she had my book in her hands. What would she think? What would she want to change? What would she be like to work with?

The answer: she loves the book, she wants to do only minor revisions, and she's awesome.

We've worked through four chapters so far, and yesterday I faced my first big challenge: she marked two sentences to change that I wanted to keep as is. The fact is, I've agreed with everything she's done so far. She's really brilliant in keeping things tight, noticing those small discrepancies, and smoothing over awkward phrases. I'd accepted every change until these two sentences. I could see why she wanted to change them, I just really liked them the way they were. It mostly had to do with keeping Bab's voice. So I bit my lip and sent an email. I understand why you want to change them, but I think they should stay this way because...

And I hit send. And waited. And she wrote back almost immediately and said, You're right. I see why you wrote it that way. Let's keep it.

Phew!

So now it's Friday. I've managed to get up at 6:40 every morning - which is a major feat for me. I've gotten kids to school on time (other than that one bus fiasco day, but I even managed to keep all from panicking that day). I've managed new swim lessons, choir, youth group, piano. I've gone back to the gym and had concerted time to write.

Geez... just writing that makes me tired.

But happy.

And that's a good thing.