Then three come at once

An acquaintance from a previous job has just got in touch with me about co-authoring a book - a book about programming in this case.

I said yes.

Oh dear Lord, what have I done.

Addenda #1

In reference to Paul's comment below, I cheated. The first draft of Unit X is complete but didn't quite make it to 45 pages, so I just fixed it to show 100%. It's my bar and I can do that if I want.

Been working on the 3rd Draft of Air, and (darn it) my editing and re-writing has reduced it to 20 pages! Oh no. It needs to be at least 23. Still I have managed to fix the major concerns, none of which were terribly difficult.

It's just my red editing pen got the better of me. I can be quite ferocious when I have my editor's hat on: Ooh look, I can knock out a few more words there, and that dialogue could be much shorter, and those characters don't need to say that at all. Now I have to figure out how to add pages without it being padding. Grrr.

I ordered my weekend rail tickets and made the mistake of getting guaranteed next day delivery. Which needs a signature. I'm not in during the day. Luckily the local delivery office isn't too far away and it opens at 7am. I can get up at the usual, get the tickets, catch a slightly later train and still be in work an hour before the normal working day starts (10am).

Right. Back to Air.

Addenda #2

Oh good grief, what a mess I got myself into. I was looking at the version of Air I was working on and it slowly dawned on me, it was the wrong one. It was Draft #1, which was indeed, a bit short in the pages department.

So I located the right version - I'm actually quite organised, this is unusual for me - and transferred the new and modified scenes across. Luckily the changes were concentrated in one area. And the page count is 25 pages. Phew.

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What's on the turntable? "Amarok" by Mike Oldfield (59 minutes in). Again. It's rather good. Oh, it's finished.