Is my book REALLY getting published?

I'm in the middle of one the weird phases when I can't believe my book will get published. When I'm working on it, it seems real. Then it goes off to the publisher for its next round of polishing or editing or whatever mysterious transformations it undergoes, and it starts to seem unreal again. The book deal happened so long ago, October is a long way away. My new writing seems more real to me.

I have a deal for book 2, and that's off with the editor to look at and give me notes on to knock it into shape. It was hard to write, I felt as if someone was looking over my shoulder. Book 3, on the other hand, isn't sold so it's sort of mine. The only people I'm writing it for are my agent and my family, so I can relax a bit. I don't have a deadline, either, so there's no anxiety there. Bizarrely, this makes me write quicker! I've got up to 30k and am taking a few days break to work on the plot twists and turns, one of which made me realise I would have to reorganise the whole first thirty thousand words - but it ties all three books together. I love it when a plot bomb explodes in a 'what if...?' moment. In my case, I had a character 1 and a character 2 and was worrying about them being a bit similar...BAM! They are the same person... 

So now the chapters and scenes are all being rearranged and they tie together better and flow better. I don't want to make it too complicated to read, but I don't want to dumb it down too much, either. Now, in the middle of what is going to be a very busy week, I just need time to sort it all out and that will provide me with springboards to jump back into the plot strands. In theory.

On another subject, I've been offered an opportunity to attend an all day poetry workshop with Ruth O'Callaghan, a terrifying prospect as I haven't written more than a few lines of poetry since last year. Scary stuff, being the least experienced writer at a workshop! I'm hoping to do some teaching too, perhaps on Short Stories. It would be good for me to get my head back into the succinct forms of writing again rather than all this rambling novel stuff.