Sunday, March 10, 2013

Submitted

I submitted my final manuscript to the press last week--more than two months before my contractual deadline! Howdja like me now?--and I'm here to tell you what happens as that burden slips from your shoulders and a new day dawns:
You get tendonitis. Jesus. I'm actually pecking at my keyboard with a couple of iPad styli so's not to exacerbate the pain;

Your triumphant email to your editor produces an automatic-reply message informing you that he'll be out of the office FOR THE NEXT EIGHT DAYS;

You get two rejections in the mail the very next day;

You have no sense of direction or purpose when you get home at night;
And yet:
You still have mountains of grading. Most of which was due a week ago.

In other words? Same old life. Except now with tendonitis!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!!!!!

Renaissance Girl said...

Chop wood, carry water. You rock.

Fie upon this quiet life! said...

Congrats on the submission! At least that's not over your head while you have other stuff (grading, etc.) going on. If it's possible to stay away from the computer (hardy-har-har), try to. My hubby gets wrist/arm problems when he's on the computer too much, especially in a chair that's all wrong for his body. So he takes deliberate breaks and sometimes uses ice on his wrists. It helps.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!!

Susan said...

Congratulations! And just when you get over round 1 of post-book aimlessness, and have something really exciting, you will get the copy edited ms. back. And you have to go over it AGAIN! Proofs are better, because it looks different.

Withywindle said...

Congratulations; sympathies. My mom used a copper bracelet for arthritis; is it rubber bands for tendonitis? I have a hate-hate relationship with being rejected which should not be a model for the young and impressionable, or even for the tenured. Direction and purpose revive with the application of hot baths, chocolate, and popcorn reading; ideally simultaneously.

Sec word "eanipts", which sounds like something a kitten would do.

Sisyphus said...

Yay!!!! Celebrate by doing some gentle yoga stretches with your arms. And then take a day or two to do nothing!!!

Dr. Koshary said...

RG totally beat me to that line. Congrats, and take it easy on the wrist!

What Now? said...

Hurrah on getting the manuscript off of your desk and onto the editor's! (even if the editor doesn't know about it for another week)

Is the tendonitis a temporary state of affairs that will get better in short order?

Flavia said...

Thanks, all! (You're actually thanked, after a fashion, in the acknowledgments...)

RG: I was thinking of that all last week, in fact. It was helpful with the rejections, too: you just keep doing new work, sending stuff out, and some of it succeeds--eventually.

WN: I presume it will get better! It's been a week since I submitted the MS and I still have some discomfort, but it's better. (Interestingly, it wasn't the typing that caused it, but all the CTRL and SHFT functions I was doing, esp. highlighting, copying, & pasting text as I worked on my bibliography on my laptop. That torquing is bad news.)

jo(e) said...

Even so, congratulations!

Comradde Physioprrxaa said...

Who submittes shite early????