Down to the Short Rows
I won’t say I am nearing completion on the book but I am getting pretty close to being done. I guess that means the same thing but it seems more noncommittal to frame it in these terms.
When you tell someone you are almost done with something, that person expects to see the finished product in rather short order. Well, don’t hold your breath. I am working on it but it takes quite a while to write and edit this much content.
Currently I am in the editing phase, having created probably about 90% of the content that will be in the book. That’s a lot. Now I am editing, which is a process of tweaking, rewriting, fact-checking, deleting, adding, expanding, contracting, massaging and watching my hair get more and more gray every morning.
Editing is an important process but one that is a little too revealing sometimes, showing where I have lost sight of the ultimate story, where I strayed from my path of storytelling and trod along wandering roads, abandoning the straight and narrow razor’s edge for the meandering stream. It is important to follow the stream from time to time. I suppose that is why writers have to go through an editing phase with any project.
My goal is to be absolutely done and have the manuscript handed off to an agent or publisher by the end of the year. At very least the book will be in final form and will have been submitted to a number of folks. That I can guarantee.
So am I nearing completion? Of the writing, yes. Of the editing, maybe. Of the process? Not by a long shot. The next step is to start researching literary agents and publishers. Know one? Hook me up.
The journey is long but I think I am almost there. I can just about taste completion from where I sit. Or maybe that’s the coffee I just had.
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June 14th, 2007 at 8:13 am
I’m so proud of you, Carl.