At work, I have been dealing with a really, truly, mediocre piece of non-fiction. Well, it's sort of non-fiction, but it has a bunch of fiction in it.
It's a kind of "how-to" for dealing with some of life's less pleasant legal situations. And while a bunch of it is fact-based, there are also a lot of mostly-not-real "what-if" situations described in it.
And, because of it's strange, genre-straddling nature - and because I was working on two other high-profile pieces early last month - this one maxed out my time. (For context, normally, for a first-round edit, we get a maximum of 4 business weeks - you'll need to know that in about two or three paragraphs.)
I spent all last week frustrated with how little progress I was making. And I kept having to remind myself that there were so many different little weird ancillary problems coming up in the office - and the book had so many little strange quirks of its own - that it wasn't my fault that I was cutting it so close to the deadline.
So I actually brought it home with me this weekend and spent time on it, yesterday. And then I went to work an hour early, today, to get a jump on it. And then, about 2 this afternoon, I started to try to figure out when it had been assigned to me.
On first figuring, I'd had it for over 3 weeks (I took it over from someone else who was too busy to get to it). Then I looked closer. I finished a behemoth proofread 3.5 weeks ago. But then I had done a 2-week edit. So, really, I had only had this one on my desk for... umm... gee... I guess that explains why the edit seemed to be kind of a killer. Nothing like doing 4 weeks' worth of editing in about 1.5 weeks.
But it's done (for now - it'll be back in a few weeks for another go-round). And my calendar's next true deadline is about 2 weeks out. Of course, having said that, I'm sure that all hell will break loose tomorrow. But at least from about 4:45 this afternoon until I left the office at 5, my work life was grand.
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