What Fresh Hell Is This?

A Medieval Editing Tool

The day started out great:  I finished the Sommelier Vest (that's the real name of the Pin Problem, by the way - pix and pattern are coming soon) last night, so today's list began with e-mailing Blackwater Abbey with that happy update.  I was gonna submit a design proposal to a magazine, post to the blog, start a presentation for my new class, maybe work on this little sock I've been ignoring...

Then all hell broke loose.

Backing up a bit, I will tell you that earlier this week I wrote the acknowledgments for my book.  This felt very much like the fat lady singing, in terms of completion: "I'd like to thank the Academy..."  There have been odd corrections, little questions from the editor here and there, but overall it seemed as if my writing maelstrom was behind me.  I know that the layout is getting done around now, but other than some vague project milestones, I have no clue what is happening to my baby.  The work of making the book is largely in the hands of skilled professionals, as it should be at this stage.  So even though I haven't met them and probably never will, there are scads of other humans collaborating with me.  The baby isn't just mine anymore, which is surreal, even if it is the whole point of the endeavor.

But this morning the first thing I did was open an e-mail from my editor containing a 4th version of my entire text.  Version 1 was mine.  Version 2 was my editor's.  Version 3 was a compromise between 1 and 2.  And now there is Version 4.  A more experienced author would have known to expect this; that I wasn't as close to finished as I thought.  A seasoned writer would not have been lulled into complacency by the deafening silence coming from the publisher.  This being my first time at the Rodeo though, I was unaware that it was time to hide in the barrel. 

It seems that Version 4 must be corrected by me into Version 5, TODAY.  Not next week.  Not whenever I get around to it.  Right Now-ish.

Version 4 was created by a whole new player, whom nobody told me was on the team.  And she's WAY SMART.  She's my technical editor, and in charge of finding problems in the writing like spelling and context, and the whole Way Knitting Works.  There is no getting away with being vague or faking anything with her, because she has an encyclopedic knowledge of my subject.  Not that this bothers me - I really want the book to be as good as it can be, and I have no doubt that the tech editor (I'll call her Ms. K) knows how to get it there.  It's just that it's so humbling to have somebody question your assertions.  I am totally sure of what I mean and how I said it.  Except when I'm not.  And Ms. K has this ninja-like skill for finding every single weak spot. 

So the real problem is not that a skilled professional has located chinks in my armor.  The problem is that I was emotionally caught unawares.  Today is the day that Ms. K's hard work causes me to shore up my weaknesses.  Today is the day that someone I have never met points out my weaknesses.  In case I'm not already unsure enough as a rank beginner, here is a person whose job it is to make sure I'm not full of crap.  Daunting bit of work, that.  How's that thick skin coming along now, Smarty McBraverton?

Obviously, I will need to spend some time separating ME (my personality, my feelings, my self-ness) from the THING I MADE (which is just a pile of work that I did).  Funny how hard that can be to get done: if the project came from inside of my head and (quite literally) out of my fingers, then how can it not always be an extension of me?  Kind of an emotional ass-kicker. 

At least I don't have time to wallow in introspection for long.  TODAY means TODAY, after all.  Better get over it and do what needs doing.  And then I'll promise myself Therapeutic Fiber.  I'm SO going yarn shopping.

Monday In Cleveland

Yesterday I was in Cleveland, OH, where I taped a guest segment for Interweave's Knitting Daily TV show.  Series 300 will begin airing on PBS in July, and my episode is called "Fun With Color".   More details as I have them.  The taping went fine, but I learned that Liz Gipson's theory is totally true:  TV cameras remove all of your personality and replace it with pounds of ugly fat.  Aside from that, I managed not to crash into anything on the set (at least while the cameras were running) and may have formed a coherent sentence or two, though the jury's still out on that one.

The best part of my trip was making new friends:

Here are two of  the Knitting Daily TV hosts, Shay Pendray and Eunny Jang, with me in the middle.  These ladies have The Chops, my friends:  Eunny taped six segments back to back, solo, all before lunch.  Shay conducted different guest spots throughout the day, gently steering her awkward and nervous subjects through the process so that it was over before they knew what hit them.  Just the way we like it.

I also befriended:
 

Spinderella Herself:  The lovely and (preternaturally) talented Abbey Franquemont, whose fourth grade hat I was gushing on about only last November.  Abby's new book is due for release at the same time as mine, so we had many notes to compare.  Getting to spend the day with this lady was absolutely the crowning blow to my resolve not to become a spinner:  It's so over now:  I'm gonna spin.  We also hatched a Cunning Plan, which will ultimately result in BIG FUN for knitters in the fall...Watch This Space!

In all, the experience was humbling, enlightening, inspiring, and exhausting.  By way of recovery I am taking the day off to hang with Phillip and the smallies, mount an assault on Mount Washmore, and other normal stuff.  Who knows:  might even knit...

A Name For The Baby

The baby in question is of course, not a real baby, but my book; heretofore referred to as "My Book", "The Book", or in moments of impending doom "The @%$#$O! Book".

The process of becoming a writer is much less predictable than the process of becoming a knitter, or at least it has been for me.  When I knit, I have a general degree of certainty that Yarn + Needles = Knitwear.  It may not be the knitwear that I intended, but I am pretty well guaranteed that with enough tenacity, and possibly wine, I will ultimately end up with a final product which is knitted. 

With writing, the equation seems to be a lot more ephemeral.  I often find that Time + Inspiration = Drivel.  And other times Deadline + Desperation + Crashing Hard Drive = Brilliance.

Such seems also to be the nature of naming books.  Back when I decided that what I really needed to do was write a book (sometime after deciding that I needed to design a sweater, but before deciding that I needed brain-enhancing vitamins), the title was one of the first ideas which suggested itself to me.  It was as organic as the designs themselves.  The name was perfect; it was descriptive, it was pithy, it was original.  When a publisher decided to actually make my book, it was also the first thing to go.  Apparently, there is a lot more to know about the naming of books than I knew.

Since my editor delicately informed me of the "New Working Title" of my project, its name has changed about 4 times that I know of, and probably more than that.  It seems that these things are decided by committees, or at least by more than one all-seeing human, and certainly not by anyone so lowly as the author.  I have hated every single name given to my book so far, until yesterday.  I so loathed the last one that I actually forgot it, which is probably for the best.  I was embarrassed to ask again what my own book is named, and I put it off for about two months.  When I finally summoned the courage to inquire, I received a whole new answer.  Thankfully, this one is much better, and I really hope it will stick. 

The whole experience with the name got me thinking about the nature of books and their covers, and of course, judging them thereby.  I realize now that the name given to my book is much less important then the guts inside of it, and the guts are much less likely to be changed at the publisher's whim.  As an experiment, I visited my favorite random name generator for a brainstorming session, which yielded some truly remarkable monikers.

If my book were:

A Tavern:                                       The Laughing Devil
A Fantasy Realm:                         Good Glimmering Barony
A Corporation:                              European Power Semiconductors
A Tree-Being:                               Madhazel
A Western Character:                  Edith "Bad Kid" Byrd
A Pirate Ship:                                The Dreaming Executioner
A Rampaging Giant Monster:    Gogospew, the Blasphemous Dweller of the Howling                                                                           Universe

So what's in a name?  Nothing.  And Everything.  On different hours and different days, my book could have been named any one of these, quite accurately. 

I'm dying to share the name of my book with you, and I promise that I will.  Not today, though, because the fact that they have finally chosen one I can live with means that telling the world prematurely could jinx it.  Also, how lame is it to make a big announcement that the baby has been named, and then CHANGE it later because somebody at the publisher had a different idea?  No, the day will come, and we'll all welcome my little monster into the world library with the appropriate publisher-sanctioned fanfare.  Until then we'll all just have to wait patiently for the arrival of little Wolfgang Nebuchadnezzar, and hope for the best.