Although the recent entry on Amazon points out that the book won’t be released until August 2006, today I received the typeset pages for Liberation Movements, my fourth book, from the Hungarian FedEx guy—a nice young man who’s sadly a little scared of our dog. The pages look great, and I’ll have a month to go over them with the proverbial fine-toothed comb before sending them back in mid-December.
It’s funny how things like this become rote after a while, yet retain a glow all their own. This is the 4th stack of typeset pages I’ve dealt with in my life, preceded by the 4th stack of manuscript copyedits, and to be followed by the 4th ARC (advance review copy). I’m no longer floored by the experience, as I once was, but I still get a little giddy. I still treat the objects, the first day, like religious relic, weighing them with my hands and marveling at their solidity. From the mind to the real world, an amazing movement.
But then the feeling fades, because it has to. The object is not a relic, it’s just a stage in the process of creation. If the feeling stays, then the author will never be able to edit well, never be able to make the necessary changes . Personally, I only feel that with this book have I been able to separate myself completely from marveling. In the copyedited manuscript stage, I made more changes, caught more mistakes, and found more passages that were not just bad, but not good enough, than ever before.
I hope the sobriety stays with me through December.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)