Everybody lucky enough to be in my aunt’s sphere of influence has experienced one or more of her spontaneous deliveries of the title of this post—on a scale of a mild rebuke to the ultimate freeze in your damn tracks ‘cause Thor’s hammer’s about to drop. Not that she’s ever laid a hand on anybody I know of since her gritty personality takes care of business, along with her warm, quirky side.

I swear, she’s like a jazz improviser in a league of her own.

I wonder if you can guess why I’m mentioning all that right up front in this post. Of course, I also wonder if you can guess why I’m not using a question mark at the end of both this sentence & its predecessor. (If you’re interested, it’s because wonder constructs are statements, not questions.)

See what I mean? I’m so entrenched in my editorial mode that I make sidebar notes to readers while writing a post. Granted, I’ve been spending more time than I care to admit hunting down flagrant fouls in my latest novel, Core Haven, especially unnecessary dialogue tags (e.g., he said). That’s what I get for reading the sagely advice of a professional editor on Threads that I’d love to have in my camp—wait, should that be “who I’d love to have in my camp”?

So my aunt’s phrase “cool your jets” came back to me while I was hiking along pretending I wasn’t ruminating about being in editorial mode again. I tried out different levels of her scale on myself for shock value, including Thor’s hammer, but cajoling only goes so far with me. I have to deliberately choose to reconnoiter, rethink, & revisit before I can even consider reframing.

All the same, I’m sticking with her contribution to my toolbox as I navigate the last phase of revising. My bottom line is that I refuse to let 214 recent changes in a novel I thought was a 99.9% finished get to me.

Coolin’ my jets with the best of ’em.

Drew

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