| Writing Tips (continued) | | Date Created: Jan 30, 2006, 05:43 PM |
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3. Prepare for an emotional roller-coaster. In ultra-slow-motion.
Everything about writing and publishing takes a long time. You crack wise and a year later, someone in a room in another county will laugh. If you're very lucky you'll find out about it a few months after that. Deal with it.
And nothing is ever finished. You turn your completed manuscript over to the editor and, if your editor is good, the writing is only beginning. It's devastating when the editor and publisher who were so encouraging when they gave you the contract now tell you all the things that they want changed. They hate it! you feel like. Maybe I'm unusual, but I have 7 or 8 drafts of each of my two books on my hard drive -- it gets to the point where it gets confusing. The thing I was calling Chapter 3 is now Chapter 7; and is this revision 6 or revision 5... is this change to the opening of Ch. 5 sufficient to call this a new version of the whole or is it just version 5b? Then once the editor is as happy as possible within the constraints of the publisher's deadlines and all, so that it goes off to press, you're still not really done. There's cover designs to think about and the back cover to conspire over and so on. Then it's time to start thinking about book launch and publicity and the next book. What's a good follow-on from this one? Can you come to Carlisle to talk to the sales reps?
By the time that the book actually appears, it's very very hard not to feel "Well, about time!" You've been talking it up as if it's real until you're tired of it and you're off thinking about 2 or 3 other projects. Here's the thing: it's terribly hard to ever find a time when you view the thing as an accomplishment to celebrate. It's so slow that anytime anything happens, it always feels like old and irrelevant news. With my two, the only time that I felt the kind of "Wow! It's really happening!" that I expected to feel on receiving the physical book came instead much earlier in the process. One day, out of the blue, a talented graphic artist in the USA sends me three different ideas he's had for the cover. What do I think? Thank God for that moment! To see your ideas as a springboard for someone else's creativity! Now there's something to celebrate! At a book launch, you're having to be a salesman and celebrity rather than a celebrant. But opening up those PDF files for the first time... come, friends: rejoice with me!
Tomorrow, why not writing is more important than writing. |
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