For the past month I have been working on yet another major rewrite of Ash (hopefully the last big one!), and I just finished a feverish week of writing till midnight (midnight!) and drinking Diet Coke and not seeing any real people (OK, I saw them, but I didn’t talk to them!), and today I sent it off to my editor and I am free! Free! Until I have to do another round of editing, but hey, I’m not thinking about that right now.

Frankly, although I love my book dearly and feel quite friendly toward it right now, I also feel kinda dazed. I can relate to Libba Bray.

It’s funny, but when I get in deadline mode, I become extremely productive and am able to not only complete my project on time, but also read entire books for pleasure (I finished and loved Robin McKinley’s Chalice, which I’ll write more about next week, and am halfway through Shannon Hale’s Austenland), watch lots of TV (I haven’t missed an episode of Project Runway or Survivor), and become extremely well-informed about current events (anybody wanna discuss the Wachovia-Wells Fargo-Citigroup fiasco?). I don’t know why I can do this, but I’m pretty sure it’s how I survived grad school.

Anyway, the good thing about this is that I have also been able to do a lot of web surfing, which as managing editor of AfterEllen.com I just didn’t do. Back then I mostly went to the sites I knew would give me the info I needed right away, and the rest of the time I stayed the hell away from the internet. Now, though, I am addicted to it. I swear, it was almost crushing my ability to get any writing done! Good thing I’m also kind of a strict disciplinarian (hee).

So, that is how I found Libba Bray’s blog (she is the author of A Great and Terrible Beauty). It has become a huge comfort to me to know that there are other writers out there also pounding away at the keys. There are some writers whose blogs I read every day, like Robin McKinley, who has now launched her own forum (which, I admit, freaks me out a bit because, OMG, interacting with Robin McKinley fans in a free-wheeling discussion!). And there are some writers’ blogs I’ve only recently stumbled across, like that of Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling, which is getting a lot of positive reviews and sounds so interesting I think I’m going to go out and buy it today. Seriously.

I really enjoy Shannon Hale’s blog, too, because it’s called Squeetus for some reason, and because she writes very well-thought-out posts on reading, author responsiblity and more. (Hale wrote Goose Girl as well as the aforementioned Austenland). I also came across Jennifer Weiner’s blog, where she is revising her 2002 advice for writers, which I think is really excellent. (Weiner has written lots of bestselling chick lit — and hey, I like chick lit too.) That might be because I think I pretty much inadvertently did everything in that list in that order, with the exception of getting a dog (I got the dog after I finished the book).

Last but not least, at a particularly bad moment during this rewrite when I thought for sure I was going to pull my hair out with frustration because I could not figure out how to get the main character from Point A to Point B without it being completely boring, I went to Laurie R. King’s blog and discovered that she had recently done a podcast interview on the revision process. Go here to download it. It totally saved me.

Next week, I get to start thinking in a focused way about book no. 2. I can’t wait! But first, I’m taking the weekend off. Woohoo!