Pile o’ Words

If you were wondering - this is what 65,000 words looks like in hard copy form. Good times. I received this in the mail from my publisher and I am blessed with yet another opportunity to read my book before it is sent out to the masses. Really, I just think I’ve had enough of reading this thing. I’ve read each chapter probably at least 10 times by now, with the writing and rewriting and copy edits and the disagreeing with the copy edits and so on and so forth.

This is the first time I’ve seen it all at once. Usually I deal with the chapters on an individual basis, and somehow that seemed less intimidating than this big ol’ stack of papers. And thank god, because I don’t know what I would have done if I’d thought about this big ol’ stack of papers when I was writing the big ol’ stack. I probably would have been paralyzed by how many pages I was going to need to write. Taking it one chapter at a time, 5 or 10 thousand words at a time, that was a little easier to digest.

So then. We are getting ever closer to the book being in actual book form. We’ve moved off the computer and onto the paper. Soon this paper may be cut into actual book-sized pages and then, THEN, those pages will be bound together and distributed to those masses I spoke of earlier. Those masses being pretty much just my mom and Chipper Jen. Both of whom will be expecting a complementary copy, so I doubt that this will be the money-making venture I was hoping it would be. Oh well, maybe I can make some extra money with the proof-reading skills I’ve acquired during this process.

But then again, I doubt that, as I am the world’s worst proof-reader. Which is okay, seeing as though I have not only an editor, but a copy editor, a proof-reader and yet another editor looking over my pile o’ words. So far they have all done a brilliant job transforming my sometimes questionable grammar into something somewhat coherent. You know what I was thinking while “reading” this book this weekend (and by “reading” I mean, staring off into space, thinking about everything BUT this book (I’m a bit bored by the book on the 11th read-thru))? I was thinking how many people probably read over that James Frey book that turned out to be complete BS. And then I was thinking how pissed off all of them were that he duped them all. And then I was thinking that it took pretty big balls on his part to knowingly lie to so many people. Powerful people too. I would have an ulcer by this stage in the writing process if I knew I was lying, let alone if friggin’ Oprah called and said she wanted to be bestest friends because of my true story that was in fact a load of poo.

These are the things I think about instead of reading my book for the 11th time. I also organized my entire house and cleaned a little as well. I highly recommend my book, I do not highly recommend reading it 11 times. Unless you have some spring cleaning you’ve been meaning to get to.