I finished my book.
I've said that twice now, I think, and while it's true, the book itself also isn't finished. Last... May, I think? I finished a full draft of the book. A few rounds of revision later, I've now sent my editor a file with the word "final" in its name. Still to come: copyediting, a cover, turning a word doc into book pages, all things that thankfully other people do. But that's what feels finished about this moment, the balance swinging from "I do it, granted with some help" to "other people do it, granted with me still hopefully a bit involved."
All with almost a year to go until publication.
Not that long when you think about the fact that I signed my contract over three years ago, spent six months before that writing a book proposal, and first started writing about this subject in January of 2012. A smooth decade.
Part of my last pass of revision was reading through the whole book out loud. I was looking for little hiccups in phrasing that could be smoothed out, a final polish, but it also felt like something of a ritual. Embodying the text that's lived in my brain and through my eyes and on computer screens in files all this time. (Last May my ritual polish was reading the draft printed out, spiral-bound thanks to Kinkos.) I read it all around the house, in the recliner in Miles's room, in the car parked in the driveway, wherever I could find quiet and privacy. And... I loved it. Yes it was partly the fantasy (hopefully to be realized) of reading my own audiobook. But I also loved getting to know my own writing that way, hearing it, feeling it in my body. Some of these sentences are old enough that I don't remember writing them, don't remember the alchemy of idea and inspiration that led me to a certain transition or phrase. There's a structural move in one chapter that made me think, How did I do that? I have no idea! I don't think it felt fancy or innovative in the moment, just the logical sequence of ideas. But reading it now it felt impressive, and interesting. I'm going to hold onto that feeling for whenever I start writing whatever I write next, to remember that when I'm open and listening to whatever's under the surface of my conscious ideas, cool things can happen.
I'm treasuring this moment of loving the book I wrote, while maybe half a dozen other people in the world have read it, all people I trust, all people who love me and know to be gentle with this newborn thing. I don't feel like it's fragile, though. I'm very ready for it to be out in the world. (In a year.)
There's plenty more work to be done, and now, after three years or a decade, I need to remember how to find new ideas, to find entirely new questions and not just new ways of answering this one. Gonna lie in my hammock a lot this week, too, though, to be honest.
I have two one-day writing classes coming up, both online, both for writers of fiction and nonfiction of all levels, through Catapult:
5/21: Shortcuts to an Expert's Writing Process (3 hours, $75). In this one-day intensive for writers of all experience levels, through lecture and individual exercises, you’ll learn about the science of writing development and how you can use that knowledge to build a better writing process for yourself. We’ll talk about working memory, generation vs. assessment, how to quiet your inner critic (or at least tell her to wait her turn), and revision strategies that will make writing better and more enjoyable, every step of the way.
6/25: Using Scrivener for Creative Writing (90 min, $50). Scrivener is a word-processing program designed for authors of all genres, with space to collect and annotate research and notes, draft, organize, and revise. But it is a hefty piece of software, with far more features than any one project requires, or any one person can easily learn. This lecture-based class will provide a tour of the Scrivener features most useful for wrangling research, drafting, feedback, revision, and fact-checking of book-length or otherwise hefty projects.
Just reply here if you have any questions about either.
xxo