Draft #2

Is Done (for Now)

Hi friends,

I’m a little fuzzy, I have to admit. It’s been a crazy few weeks. My agenting world has been a flurry of publication plans and deals and contract, which is the good stuff. My writing life has been full of interviews, edits, and more edits. Yesterday I sent off the second draft of my non-fiction book about writing and publishing to my editor, and I’ll tell you what—I’m glad it’s off my desk for now!

In this draft, guided by my excellent editor’s notes, I beefed up the parts that were too slim and trimmed the parts that were too beefy. I moved chapters around and cut some into two. I did interviews to add context outside my own experience, and those were extra hard because I am not a journalist! I had helpful friends to guide me and very forgiving interview subjects and in the end, I did more worrying about it than it actually warranted. As usual. Once I sat with everything and made notes, plans, and took some deep breaths, I did what I set out to do—make all the changes one at a time.

And you know what? It was hard. It was hard to remember what I had written elsewhere, so I was constantly flipping around to make sure I wasn’t repeating myself. It was hard to answer some of my editor’s questions, not because the answers weren’t there, but because they required some time and thought, and I wanted to be attack the pile of work in front of me. I nervously watched the word count creep up. I could have probably read it over again two or three more times to catch all the little bits and bobs that went astray in the editing, but I ran out of time. The more time I took now would mean less time everyone else has with it in the end, so I just got on with it and did my best.

And it will be fine. My editor will give me another round of notes, hopefully smaller in scale, and I’ll have another stab at it. I’ll be able to polish things up and trim things down and make more final decisions about what needs to be in the book and what does not. I’ll likely have to make some tough choices (I’m looking at you Appendices 1 and 2) and just this morning I remembered something I should have added in. I’ll have one more time to make considerable changes, but after that, not so much. The next time I go through the draft, it’ll need to be as close to final as I can make it (aside from copyediting) because we’ll be getting close to typesetting the book, and big changes at that point will make everyone’s job harder, including mine. It’s both a relief to know I have more time with it soon but beyond that, I know it’s going to be more stressful, higher stakes, more critical to get things right. This pressure isn’t bad—it’s normal. It won’t be unmanageable—it’ll just be work. Writing a book is hard, and this is one of the hard parts, and we all get through it one way or another. The book won’t be perfect and that’s ok. As long as it says what I want it to say, in the clearest way possible, I’ll have done my job.

So, I’m going to go to bed early and sleep off this fuzziness and get back to work on my other job(s). It’s out of my hands until it comes back my way.

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Throwback Post! Check out this one from annals of Agents & Books!

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And a huge happy pub day to my friend Glynnis MacNicol for her amazing memoir I’M MOSTLY HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF: On Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure In Paris. If you’ve ever wanted to say a full-throated fuck you to the patriarchy, get this book.

OXOXOXOXOX,

Kate