It Looks Like We Did It!
*Knocks as hard as he can on a wood table* This thing's probably gonna be a book.
When I hit send on my manuscript about a month and a half ago, propelling 65,000 words of who-knows-how-good-it-is narrative nonfiction to an editor who very well may have had something different in mind, I didn’t know what to expect. Would she like it? How much would she want to change? How quickly — or slowly — would things move forward? Would they move forward at all?
Luckily my editor had just the reply to soothe an anxious brain: It might be a few weeks before she could get to this.
Great, I thought. I’ll take a break.
It was surprisingly easy. Within a week I was no longer idly thinking about my characters or my conclusions, pondering weak spots and obsessing over possible holes. Instead I thought about normal life stuff. I read books for fun. Colleen and I went to New Orleans one weekend. We watched Cheer.
Normal life stuff gave way to extraordinary life stuff. Colleen and I also … drumroll … got engaged! The organizational brain space previously devoted to a manuscript has now been unleashed upon the task of helping to plan a wedding. I can tell you right away which of the two is more overwhelming.
(Today is also my birthday. Everything is truly coming up Milhouse.)
Back to normal life stuff: I also returned to my job, where there was plenty to distract me — not that I needed it — from the fate of my submitted book. The lone reminder, other than a few loose reporting ends I’ve still been tying up, was a question from friends and colleagues: What comes next?
Easy, I answered. I have no idea!
My editor would send me some thoughts? Some feedback? Actual edits? No matter the form, I expected some judgment to be rendered, and imagined a spectrum of possible outcomes: First, the dream scenario: “Andy, this is great. Attached is a PDF of proposed revisions, all of them minor.” A boy can dream.
And then there was the opposite: “Andy, this is not the idea we talked about. I think it’s best if we void the contract and go our separate ways.”
It’s not that I thought Door #2 was likely, I just needed to insulate myself against the disappointment that such a scenario would bring. So I’ve done the mental work to make outright rejection an acceptable, if painful, outcome. I’d just keep my chin up and start pitching to other presses, this time with a full manuscript under my arm. It would suck, but it would be OK.
After about a month passed from that first email, I got my nerve up to check on where we stood, so I emailed my editor. Turns out she had already sent the manuscript out for peer review, something I had expected to come later in the process. But, again, I know nothing about this, so, cool.
Days passed. Good. Very calm over here.
And then last week I got an email. My eyes have never darted over something so fast. “Andy,” it began, “We have both external reports in and they are very good, with some additional fairly minor suggestions for revision.”
!!!!
Very good?
!!!!
Fairly minor?
!!!!
You mean to tell me this thing will be a book and not a quagmire?
Cool. Great.
For about two years I’ve responded to every surge of anxiety by telling myself to have faith. Eventually, I said, you’ll get to a moment where you know this thing you’re working on will turn out. That it will be something — maybe not what you originally envisioned — but a finished thing that can be transmitted to the world. I told myself that I would finally feel at ease when I knew this for a fact.
It appears that now I know. It is a relief.
There’s more to do. The work that remains is to write a response proposing how to incorporate the reviewers’ critiques. Then I’ll likely go over more changes from my editor, make some other additions and subtractions, haggle over the title and the cover, and do many other things I’m not anticipating. The break is over.
And as I focus on those tasks, we open upon a new phase of this process: promotion. When I was still pitching my proposal I learned that it’s up to the author to do most of the promotion of the books themselves. That means pitching excerpts, op-eds, trying to get on radio shows and in newsletters — anything to get the word out. (It was part of the genesis of this newsletter.) Now that I have good reason to believe the book will be real, I can start figuring out a plan to make sure people know about it. (Please email me if you have ideas!)
More to come on that. As I pore over the reviewers’ comments, I’ve found chances to luxuriate in the signs of a job done. Like getting on Spotify and seeing that my Repeat Rewind playlist is composed almost entirely of instrumentals from the Frozen soundtrack (it was on heavy rotation in my final weeks of drafting).
☝️ It does. It really does. ☝️
Or like coming back to Chapter 1 with fresh eyes as I respond to the reviewers and thinking to myself, this is actually pretty good.
— Andy
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