I have been derelict in keeping up with this blog about writing technique and process. My sole, poor excuse is that I’ve been too busy writing.
With my new book about to be published, though, I am reminded every day of certain rituals associated with being a writer. Each step of a new book’s release moves the thing from an abstraction to a material fact; each stage awakens a writer’s trepidation and, one hopes, provides pleasure. The arrival of the first box of hardcover books is certainly a signal moment.
Though I have now published seven novels, almost eight years have passed between Bones of the Barbary Coast and On Brassard’s Farm (due out April 4). I had therefore largely forgotten the various stages of a novel’s physical birth. It gets realer and realer through a series of steps — final manuscript approval, copy-editing review, cover review and approval, jacket text getting written, minor fixes to be made . . .
Receiving the advanced reading copies (ARCs), several months ago, was certainly an important step; all of a sudden, the book took on material, tangible form. But ARCs are smallish, cheaply bound, and still full of typos.
So the real reward comes on the day the first hardcopies arrive in the mail. You open the box with trepidation. Will the cover look right, or will the colors be off? Is the text layout readable, spacious, easy on the eyes? Did they get those page and line breaks right? Does the book have the heft, the solidity, that it should? You take one out of the box; you weigh it in your hands; you skim a few pages. You put it experimentally on the table, just as if, say, someone had been reading it and set it briefly aside.
I got my first box of hardcopies the other day, and it was a pleasure to see the thing at last. If you are an aspiring writer, trust me, this moment is worth the work, the wait, and the trepidation!
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