Submission of the manuscript

I returned the manuscript this morning to my editor. It has now been twelve days since I spent most of my free time reviewing not one manuscript, but two. At VLB, the penultimate copy of the text was used to make corrections. Nothing dramatic in itself, since the text had not been so altered, but enough so that I had to read their corrections and my text marked final.

I had removed some passages here and there, created others, changed the structure of three chapters. My editor will send it back to me within two weeks. This will then be the last reading in the Word document. This will be followed by the layout stage and, from there, a final check. This is the number of times you have to reread a text so much that you feel slightly nauseous or increasingly dissatisfied, because the more you examine it, the more you doubt it.

The reader will not see all this, will not know that there has been repetition here, inconsistency there. The eyes usually go too fast, the emotion fills these cracks. Nothing, of course, is perfect. These rereadings also have a strange effect on me; they make me less sociable, sensitive to dreams, to the imagination. My mind is back on the hunt for new ideas. I wish I could have that luxury of daily silence to be able to write and write. And even if it makes me asocial, I still want to meet people so that they can feed me with their stories. I have two or three ideas for novels, I don’t yet know where my choices will end. It is certainly difficult for me to detach my life from my writing. However, I have to find characters who can speak for me.

For the moment, let’s leave all the space to Falaise. Within a week, I’ll be promised a cover. I can’t wait! It is the beginning of the objectivation, the staging and the beginning of the total detachment. For the time being, I fear neither criticism nor indifference. Is this wisdom? Probably only the knowledge of how it works in this little world. Not waiting for anything and maybe everything will come.

Let’s continue the hours, happiness is lost in a few seconds.