In Which Being Obsessed Saves Me From the Police...

So, I got dragged away from my desk yesterday by a combination going away/birthdy/anniversary party -- a bonfire on a local beach. Hey, it's 45 degrees, perfect weather for hanging around outside eating and dancing and whatnot on the oceanfront.... And so it was. But after a few hours, I started to feel the pull of my desk (those ankle chains only stretch so far, y'know!). So I made my regrets and came home to poke at the revisions some more.

Discovered this morning that, a few hours after I left, the cops shut the party down. Fines (bonfire sans permit) for everyone! Been a long time since I was at a party the cops showed up at (uninvited, anyway).


And, as I finish up the revisions (shhhh, don't jinx it!) on Burning Bridges, I leave you with one last excerpt...

( not quite a spoiler but... )

Done! and Thoughts on Professionalism

I have saved and closed the file on Burning Bridges. It gets to sit for 24 hours, then I read it through for clarity (my own, hopefully) and then it goes off to Madame Editor, ON DEADLINE! Yay me. Now I must go clean up a bit. Do laundry. And then get back to the other projects that are tapping their feet and muttering at me...

But while we're sort of on that topic:

jaylake asked the question, and I answered (and reposted here, because I think it's a useful thing): what does "professional" mean to you, in the context of being a working genre writer?

My answer:

Pretty much the same thing it does in any career: Working hard to hit deadlines, exceed expectations, and satisfy the person(s)who sign your paycheck (in this case, both editors and readers). Not sticking your foot in your mouth so far you can't recover is good but not essential, as has been proved time and again. Accepting that being talented only covers so much, and that hard work often more than compensates for a lack of genius. Knowing that it's not enough to get there, you have to work to stay there, wherever "there" is for you. Doing things that may not be as much fun, because they're needful for the job.

In short: remembering that it's a job. It's the best job I can ever imagine, but it's still a job.

There's often a lot of conversation about professional behavior at conventions, etc. The convention circut, to me, is as much my 'office' as my office is. I may not always be perfectly dressed, or stone cold sober, or in the best of moods, but I remain aware that I'm being observed and judged -- and that humans prefer gossip to fact, so you might as well give 'em something to have fun with (I am reminded of my first year on the circut, when Something happened/Was Said by one of our authors, and I was horrified. My then-boss laughed and said "something new will come along that will be worse, trust me." And so it did, and so it always does. See above comment regarding feet and mouth.