Why January is sucking less...

Because I heard from the press that has my book manuscript!

It was a very strong invitation to revise and resubmit - the editor specifically said that both she and the reader believe the book is well written and very exciting and said that she "strongly encourages" me to continue with the press by making revisions (i.e., rather than shopping the manuscript elsewhere in the hopes of an immediate acceptance). In fact, she apologized for not being able to give me a contract right away (of course, I never possibly expected that I would get a contract without any revisions!) and was generally lovely. The reader's report was thorough and kind - not a bit of snark - and was also praiseworthy as well as constructively critical.

The revisions suggested will likely only take a couple of months during this semester (quicker if this was summer) and they won't be arduous. What's interesting is that they want me to recast my thesis - at first I bridled at this b/c it seemed like I was being asked to jettison the governing concept of the entire book - "Nay!", I said. But, after reading the report several times and considering every single word (with a couple of colleagues), I realized that they want me to broaden my current umbrella term/concept (i.e., "tulips") and replace it with "flowers," which is simultaneously more easily applicable to the entire project and probably more accurate. The reader was kind of like: "All tulips are flowers, but not all flowers are tulips; you're talking about flowers, and you're doing it in a really cool new way, and you can still talk about tulips as a special kind of flower in the last half of the book, but chapter one is really about daisies." Does that hokey analogy make enough sense in an obscure, bloggy way?

What's great is that the reader and editor loved all my specific readings and the chapters - basically, what's needed is a recasting of the introduction, and then some minor revisions throughout the manuscript to ensure that I'm referencing things consistently (i.e., flowers, not all tulips).

So, joy!!! I'm so happy - I've thought about what they're suggesting and, while I at first shouted "Hell, no - tulips won't go!!!", I'm now thinking - "actually, this will make the book better, more precise, and more broadly appealing. Daisies are cool, too."