Happy New Year

New Year has never been one of my favorite holidays. I remember when I was a kid I couldn’t wait until I was grown up and could take part in the merriment. I watched Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve and observed the partying from the quiet of my living room.

But when I did grow up, I discovered those parties weren’t all they were cracked up to be. I remember getting grabbed and kissed by a lot of guys (generally drunk) I wouldn’t ordinary kiss for a million bucks. Yuck. One year we spent a lot of money for tickets to a swanky party at some hotel. The food was bad. The dance floor too crowded. And again, at midnight I was surrounded by drunks.

Maybe the problem is that I don’t drink. At least not in the quantity to numb me to the madness. I’m a cheap drunk and would fall asleep long before I hit the proper level of intoxication to be considered a “good buzz.” So I always took the job as designated driver. And therefore I was the sober witness to my friends making asses of themselves.

Hence, I now stay home and go to bed, sleeping through the revelry. It’s just much better that way.

Therefore, here I am, well rested with no hangover, taking the day off.

I’m still pounding my way toward getting my manuscript ready to turn in to the interested agent I’ve been working with. I “finished” the rewrite the Friday before Christmas and took two days off…the first time I’d done that in over a month. But Monday I was back at the tinkering. Tuesday, I printed out a hard copy and started reading and marking it up.

Note to all my critique buddies: If you think I’m tough on you, you should see how hard I am on me. Hubby looked over my shoulder yesterday and commented, “You’ve got a lot of red ink on that page.” What he didn’t realize is that he could have picked up just about any of my 390 or so pages and found considerable red chicken scratch.

I finished the hard copy mark up yesterday and claimed today as another day off. Tomorrow, I’ll be back at it. Writing is rewriting and revising. With any luck, this particular round of revisions will only take a week.

I hope the rest of you are enjoying a day off, whether you partied last night or slept through it. Or rang in the New Year in your pajamas in your living room, rocking with your TV.

Happy 2012!