I also got my first official "non-friend" congrats letter (I'm dying to type "fan" in there, but that seems too presumptuous for words).  It was from a former undocumented Chilean man and it really touched me.

The thing is... I always have such good, darn elegant excuses.  She says she needs until Monday, and waiting is seductive.  What if she uncovers some hidden structural flaw I am blind to, like the mother of the class bully who sees nothing but dimples and golden hair? 

I cannot bring myself to look at it again to judge it afresh (yet again) for myself.  One part of me wants this thing birthed already, the other part of me wants to do it perfectly, and, lastly, another 4-year-old part of me wants someone to pat me on the head and say, "This is good.  It's ready.  Send it."

So here's public commitment.  I am sending it by next Wednesday, feedback or no.  That means that I have to look at it myself over the weekend one more (last?) time.  And if she gets me feedback on Monday, I will only do what I can before Wednesday before sending it on.  Iron-clad, public commitment.  Wednesday, people. 

I have finished the book.

No, this time isn't like that other time when I finished draft 1.  It isn't even like the time I finished draft 2 earlier this summer, then pressed it hurriedly into my brother's hands, urging him to read it immediately.  It isn't even the time I finished it by adding an extra 50 pages of description and dialogue, then bugged my brother to read those too, simultaneously, while he was reading the other ones.

This time it's the "sat-in-my-brother's-place-and-tore-the-whole-manuscript-apart-making-notes" then "walked-over-broken-glass-to-make-all-those-changes" done.  Done, like I can't imagine how to be more done, although it's becoming something of a familiar feeling, that I've given it all, only to find there is more to give.

But, darn it, this time I created a table of contents and a title page, so I must be really done.

It's out to one more reader.  Then, since she'll think every single word is flawless and won't suggest any changes, to the agent.

In her 70's when arthritis took her away from her embroidery, she began a career as an artist.  Grandma Moses became a media star and one of the 20th century's most celebrated folk artists.

She was self-taught, to boot.  She died at 101 years old. 

Here is a picture of our brilliant method which I'm sure no living writer has ever conceived of before: flashcards - one scene per card. 

I began this morning on fire, by discovering that I start way too much dialogue with "Well," and over-use "very" and "in short order."  In short order?  What the? Anyway, I zapped all those little suckers with an easy little search and destroy, er, replace, and began the real task of slicing and dicing and beefing up one of the major scenes which I hadn't done enough with before.

By 2:30 p.m., when the phone rang, I was on a roll.

"Where are you?" asked my husband, who is in Greece with our two kids.

"Home.  Why?"  What an odd thing to micromanage from thousands of miles away.

"Why aren't you at the airport to pick us up?"

"Because you're coming back tomorrow."

"No, we're at JFK.  Come get us."

Ugh.  I won't get into details about who's to blame for the mix-up (suffice it to say that I have a text message that proves it's not me, but don't tell my husband that).  Anyway, I'm delighted to have my kids back home, all tan, kissy and, alas, still bickering amongst themselves.  But my day of editing is shot.

Great articles on rejection:

Richard Dooling - gives examples of famous writers' rejections, like Elie Weisel's Night, which has sold 10 million copies, being rejected by fifteen publishers.

Or this one on Right-Writing.  Alex Haley wrote every day for 8 years before getting published.  Wow, that's more dedication than I have.

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." -- Winston Churchill.

"I think you need to take all the motherless little boys out of the story," says my brother, over my enchilada and his skirt steak at Maxwell's in Hoboken after a day of reading my manuscript.

Say what?  After some discussions with him I have come to realize there is a plethora of motherless little boys running roughshod through the narrative of what it's like to be an undocumented immigrant in the U.S.

"Yeah, they should go."

I am stunned.  My sad little cousin, Julito, my bad little cousin Marcelo, the little boy who called me a dirty spic but didn't mean anything bad by it, gone?

"What do they add to the story?" he asks.

"I don't know.  It just happened this way."

"Yes, but it isn't a history of everything that happened.  It's got a focus, right?"

"Like a mission statement?" I ask.  God, I've been in corporate for too long.

"Right.  Like what's the main theme?  What is the book wanting to say?"

Just when I think I'm done, another task.  I know he's right, but I just want the darn thing finished already.  This is like an unmedicated breech birth, with no one to yank the baby out but me.