The second draft of The Dead Takes The A Train is out to its editors, and I’m exhausted. I ended up rewriting the entirety of it over the course of a one and a month, stripping out the prose and keeping the foundations of it. The book, which started at around 90k-ish, has since chonkified into a hefty 120,000 words.
"(They let themselves in to begin cleaning before I finished moving out, and continued with their cleaning even though I went, ‘excuse me, but what the hell?’ And god, do not get me started on how the building manager kept saying ‘they’re only cleaning the bathroom’ when I twitchily pointed out at her that they’d let themselves in again that second time.)"
W T ENTIRE F ‽ ‽ ‽
I've had some dodgy landlords/agents, but that is so very far beyond acceptable that I would have a great deal of trouble staying at a conversational volume, let alone keeping my language sanitised. Add in that stuff 'went missing' and was mysteriously found again when you talked about lodging a police report, and I'd likely have gone straight to the local cop shop from yelling at the manager!
(None of this is intended as directions/instructions for 'what you should do', I have no idea what the Canadian rental system/regulations are, let alone Montreal's, etc, but wow, that is some utter bullshit, and I hope that the folks responsible discover they have some papercuts when they get lemon juice on them. Every day unless and until they truly repent and make serious efforts at restitution.
My heart react is for the 120,000 words and the weirdo cat, but definitely not for the abuse of the building manager and the rest.
What a nightmare.
But also, congratulations on the novel revision!
AND we are eager to welcome you home to New York!
"(They let themselves in to begin cleaning before I finished moving out, and continued with their cleaning even though I went, ‘excuse me, but what the hell?’ And god, do not get me started on how the building manager kept saying ‘they’re only cleaning the bathroom’ when I twitchily pointed out at her that they’d let themselves in again that second time.)"
W T ENTIRE F ‽ ‽ ‽
I've had some dodgy landlords/agents, but that is so very far beyond acceptable that I would have a great deal of trouble staying at a conversational volume, let alone keeping my language sanitised. Add in that stuff 'went missing' and was mysteriously found again when you talked about lodging a police report, and I'd likely have gone straight to the local cop shop from yelling at the manager!
(None of this is intended as directions/instructions for 'what you should do', I have no idea what the Canadian rental system/regulations are, let alone Montreal's, etc, but wow, that is some utter bullshit, and I hope that the folks responsible discover they have some papercuts when they get lemon juice on them. Every day unless and until they truly repent and make serious efforts at restitution.
I hope things are vastly better now, though!
*offers hugs and sympathies*