Reading the First Draft of LPT

Today is the long awaited day! I am reading the first draft of my novel, LPT. The pages are printing now and I'm so excited.

My boyfriend and friends are the best. Yesterday and this morning they were all sending me well wishes and griping about my phone being off.

"Not off," I said, "On silent."

So you can still text and call and send me things, but for the next few hours (or majority of the day) I'll be unavaliable.

As Emily says, "It's all for a good cause."

Printing

We are printing!





Lady and Julip are very interested in the printer.



I can't wait to read! Ok... I need more paper....

Test

Testing the new ink for major printing (ie: 348 pages)

"That should be one of the front pages in your book when you publish!" Emily laughs.

Sigh

Guess who's getting ready...

Closed Until Tomorrow

That notebook.... Uhhhh....

This entire time--since I finished the first draft of LPT until now, the notebook for my novel has been sitting closed on the corner of my desk.

By the cover you can tell it went everywhere with me. It's stained with red wine and sunscreen (I think this may go without saying, but I drink gin poolside); the spine is banged up and bent from the inside of my bag.

Since I finished the draft, it's been parked on my desk.

I don't so much miss carrying it around. It's big. It's a Canson 9x12 sketchbook so it's not exactly "pocket size." It just so happens I have a best friend who makes handbags, and the last big bag she made me, along with the one she is soon to construct, is just big enough to hold this book.

I prefer it to be as it is, on my desk. Waiting. The temptation to open it and root around is nearly intolerable, and why I've left it sitting here, torturing myself I don't know. Except that this notebook is the same as all the other notebooks I keep for my novels, so if I were to have it anywhere else besides my desk, I'd be forced to look through them to determine which I'll need on Saturday.

THAT'S TOMORROW.

God, I'm so excited. And I know it would appease me, even a little, to open my notebook and explore some of my thoughts. But that would ruin me for the reading. I think I should have plenty of distance, so it's cold, so I can better see what I have in this draft but the thing of it is I can't forget about it. Like, it won't go away.

I'm sick of being cut off. Please applaud me for my self-control.

Excitement > Preparation

I am reading the first draft of my novel on Saturday. I couldn't be more excited. Or less prepared.

I need ink. I have paper, but I need ink. And then I need to decide things like format and whether or not I want to hole punch and put it in a binder or if I just want to keep it loose and shove it all in a folder (most likely what will occur). But I am going to print. And then read, uninterrupted. My plan is to wake up to a perfectly clean loft, make coffee, breakfast and lunch and get comfy.

What will I do after I finish reading? Oh, that's obvious. I'm going to open a bottle of Yellow Label, shift through my notes and sort out the amount of work that needs to be done.

Metal Letters

LPT. James and I arranged these metal letters while waiting on a fitting room at Urban Outfitters.