I met with my (wonderful, brilliant, delightful, beloved) editor on Tuesday to go over her line edits for The Revolution of Every Day. Tin House is an amazing publisher regardless of location, but I’m feeling especially lucky to work with them as a Portland author. What a luxury to be able to talk through these final edits in person, over coffee!

The edits are not at all extensive. There isn’t all that much left to do. This is good news, and this is also terrifying. You see…the book is almost done. This draft is my last chance to get it right. Sure, I’ll be able to make small (very small!) tweaks to the copyedited manuscript, but nothing substantive. This, now… This is really it. Which is… Holy shit. I mean, I’ve been writing this novel since October 2005 and very soon I will no longer be writing it. I will officially be completely done writing this book, which is older than either of my children.

There’s as much joy as fear in that. There is. But… oy vey. The PRESSURE I’m putting on myself!

And the pressure leads to procrastination. Right now the whole family is asleep and I’m supposed to be working on the line edits, but mostly I’ve been trying to get rock stars to talk to me on Twitter. (Okay. That’s actually singular “rock star.” John Roderick. I’ve spent way too much energy tweeting at him over the years. What can I say? I’ve been a fan of his music for years and years and he gives good tweet. Excellent tweet. And sometimes he responds to me and then I walk around the house with an unseemly permagrin.)

Wait–you don’t know John Roderick? The Long Winters? No? Here. Go listen to some of these, then watch this:

There. Don’t you feel good?

And now I really want to jump down a youtube rabbit hole and make you watch all kinds of videos but that’s just more procrastination. Work. I must work. Here I go.

(Unless John Roderick replies to me again. In which case I need to float around the house for a while and THEN I’ll settle down to work.)