it's begun. i'm on the last edit of my manuscript.

after an hour and a half talk with my agent yesterday, i moved to the stage in the process of my writing, where i diagram the entire novel and sloppily tape it to my wall. it's only towards the end of working on a manuscript that i feel like i need to see the whole thing laid out. over the course of the next few weeks other slips of paper will accumulate on my grungy white wall as well. character notes. bits of dialogue that came to me at work and are written on receipts and napkins. transcribed text messages i sent myself so i wouldn't forget brilliant such-and-such idea on the bus.

i love this stage.

when i think about it, i love every stage of writing. i could just as easily say: what's better than starting a new work? the wide open palate, when your characters are full of possibility and even you don't know what's going to happen.

but truly, there's nothing like being so close to the end (okay, maybe actually being finished and on submission is best). right now, the balance of my book, how amazing it is or not, is all up to me. it's the last edit that lets you knock socks off or lets you barely make a splash and get roundly rejected. the last edit is all about finesse. it's about how much you want this. how much you can extend yourself creatively to unlock that "it" factor that makes a book memorably great and hopefully publishable. everything rides on the last edit.

intense, right?

so this is where i'll be for the foreseeable future. riding the emotional THIS WILL BE THE BEST BOOK EVER / I *sob* CAN'T *sob* DO THIS wave of final edits. blog posts will be shorter. some days they might not come at all (am i the only person who regularly blogs three times a week? why, corrie, why do you do these things to yourself?)

so wish me luck. or better yet, wish me getting it just right.