Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
— Winston Churchill
By Joel Thurtell
At a book reading in Grosse Pointe recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marylinne Robinson talked about the almost total immersion she experiences when writing her books. The book becomes everything, the supreme focus. When finished, she rebounds into life and wonders how all those bills went unpaid.
Oddly, it seems to me, as I was forcing myself through the last stages of my journalism textbook, SHOESTRING REPORTER, I found myself fairly often writing columns for JOTR. I managed to pay the bills, though I put off my taxes and viewed most every other household duty as an unwanted intrusion.
But in fact, the book was the boss. Everything revolved around that last super-effort to finish it. In the middle of a conversation, or while driving, or while working on a blog column, I’d suddenly think of some tinkering way to improve it. Then a week ago last Friday, I pushed the key that sent a slew of SHOESTRING files down to the person who will design its cover and interior and set my prose in type.
You see, despite my long hard efforts, as of last Friday, SHOESTRING was still not a book.
This is something it has taken me a very long time to understand.
Maybe I still don’t get it.
I have written several books. Or so I thought. Actually, what I had was piles of pages in consecutive order printed out from computer files. Before computers, I had pages that I produced on a succession of manual and then electric typewriters.
These were, loosely speaking, manuscripts.
I called them manuscripts, yet thought of them as books.
Completed works.
Little did I know.
My first step toward higher education regarding the nature of books came when I got to know Javan Kienzle, a copy editor at the Detroit Free Press when I was a reporter there. Javan had edited her late husband William Kienzle’s murder mysteries and written a biography of her husband. She warned me not to be sending those manuscripts out to publishers or agents without having them copy-edited. Of course, sending them out as-is, the product of my hot little typewriter or printer, was just what I’d been doing for decades. And I’d been striking out.
When you submit to copy-editing, you bare all your big and little intellectual foibles. I thought I was a consistent writer till I ran into the Chicago Manual of Style‘s rules on hyphens. Then I realized I’d been making up my own rules and not always following them. Not always remembering them. That, apparently, is why we have manuals of style.
Two years ago, I went through several intense weeks of copy-editing with Up the Rouge!, the book about the canoe trip Pat Beck and I took up what the subtitle calls Detroit’s Hidden River back in June 2005. Wayne State University Press published the book almost exactly a year ago. I had chafed at what I thought was the tardiness of the Press at getting our book out. Why did it take so long to publish a book?
Well, now I am bringing out my own titles. Last summer, my little publishing firm, Hardalee Press, published two books: Plug Nickel and Seydou’s Christmas Tree. Both are small books, yet required lots of care. They took months to produce. Yet they were nothing compared to SHOESTRING. I estimate SHOESTRING will come to about 200 pages, with a couple dozen or more illustrations.
Oh, those illustrations! I needed, or thought I needed, permissions from other publications to use articles in my textbook. Even my own articles, I learned, would require permissions if I wanted them to appear as they looked in the particular newspaper or magazine. Organizing that whole side of the project seemingly had nothing to do with writing the book, yet it took enormous time.
And then came copy-editing. Long ago, SHOESTRING was copy-edited. But then I started adding chapters. Most recently, the manuscripts was copy-edited twice. Each time I’d mail the hard copy out and receive back handwritten notes on the pages. These were directions for fixing my many inconsistencies and outright errors of grammar and logic.
I couldn’t concentrate at home. I started packing my laptop along with the typescript of the book into a backpack and staking out territory in the library. There, despite some background noise (nothing like working in the chaos of a newsroom), I could concentrate for an hour or two or three and get immense amounts of work done. No telephone, no dog to pet, no household projects to distract. Just get it done.
Early last week, I finished adding the last corrections. I printed a clean copy and determined to sit down and make sure there were no errors I’d missed. Instead, something predictable but preventable happened. I started re-writing. Big no-no. The damned thing is done. Leave it alone!
And finally, on Friday, as I obsessively searched for more errors, I forced myself to stop. Instead of continuing on what was bound to be a perpetual quest for perfection, I pushed the “send” key and the manuscript was out of my hands.
I must leave it alone now.
The manuscript will be turned into book form by the designer/typesetter. When done, I’ll print it and have it proof-read for holdout errors. Then, insert final corrections, send it back to the designer. Then, she will upload it to the company that prints my books. Soon, FedEx will deliver “proof copies” of the book to me. One last read and one last chance for corrections. Then the book will be published. Announced to Ingram’s, Amazon and a host of distributors and booksellers as one more title their customers can order, or not.
Flung out to the public, as Churchill put it.
Now, I’m focused on getting our taxes done. And cleaning the basement. And sprucing up the yard.
Anything, anything but playing with my toys and killing monsters.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
