I turned in my sabbatical report yesterday about 4:50 p.m. It was “Due” before returning for the semester. So, true to my style, I waited until offices were nearly closed for the day, the last afternoon before my first duty day back!
Actually, there’s good reason for that. I finished my my novel, Who the Frack is Maddie Jackson, before I went to North Carolina in November. I finished the major rewrite on New Year’s Eve, and sent it to Brian Farrey, editor at FLUX right away. I was determined to get it sent in 2014, and of course I did that by the skin of my teeth. Flux has first right of refusal as per the contract when they bought Chasing AllieCat. I got the automated response that Brian would be back in the office on January 6.
THEN, I got comments from Shelley Tougas, reader and editor extraordinaire in my writing group (and author of The Graham Cracker Plot), and freaked out that I’d already sent it to Brian. Not really freaked out. Regretted. Because her comments were so spot-on. SOOOoooo, I launched into a good ol’ thorough rewrite using all of Shelley’s comments. I figured if I got it to Brian before 7 a.m. on January 6, I could just apologize and tell him to read this new one instead of the original one. Plus, I realized with great chagrin that my electronic signature was missing from the original email to him. If he didn’t recognize my email address, he wouldn’t even know who sent him the email and manuscript! How embarrassing!
All that is to say that I had to get the revision done in five days. I did. I worked every available, possible moment, and I sent it to Brian at 2 a.m. on January 6.
Sabbatical report: Due before January 8. Oh, boy. Typical Becky fashion.
Do you see a trend here? Why am I incapable of doing anything early? Or right the first time? I got it all done, and got everything turned in on time, by the skin of my teeth.
Brian emailed me back, assuring me that it was fine, and he hadn’t started reading the first version, so he’d use the new draft, and he was “Looking forward to reading it.” He even said I’d never believe how often agents send a new version of a novel, saying their clients revised, so would he please read the revised version(s).
Anyway, Brian has my book. I want this book to sell so badly. I am scared to think this out loud, but I think it’s a good story.
Sooooo, please keep your fingers crossed for me.
Anyway, I had to get that book revision done before I finished writing and running off all the documents for my sabbatical report. Right? I’d written the whole report, and done all the work, but putting it all together is a many, many, many hour job with the variety of stuff that I did. I got it done by 4:50, as I mentioned earlier. It’s turned in. The powers that be might refuse to approve it, but I don’t know how they can. I did everything I said I’d do, and then some, by quite a ways. I impressed myself, and I don’t if that’s ever happened before.
Since May, I wrote a screenplay, wrote an entire novel (well, it was started before, but I rewrote the entire thing, and wrote most of it new), revised it thoroughly twice, and read and reviewed 32 books. I read more than that, and reviewed a couple more, but those are the ones I included in my sabbatical report. Those reviews included 
ten South Africa books, thirteen Newbery winners I hadn’t read before, and nine others, plus some.
When I looked at the report, I thought, HOLY BUCKETS, how did one person do all that in a semester? Here’s the kicker: I felt as if I were on vacation! I worked my butt off, but I didn’t work nearly as hard or as many hours a week as I do when I’m teaching! And I didn’t stress out on a single Sunday night.
Here’s to back to the grind. And the blizzard outside. Happy New Year!
The “Dates” of some of these posts aren’t accurate. Very weird, since it’s intrinsic in the blog software and I never have to add the date. When I was finishing book reviews for the sabbatical report, posts started showing up as being written on January 7. Some of these were, but some were written a day or so before that. However, a whole block of posts shows up as January 7–the day my sabbatical report was due.
Then the one I wrote on January 8 shows up as January 9. I wonder if this trend is going to continue, or if I can figure out how to fix it.