Two for the Books

Yesterday I had a package in the mail and whaddaya know, it was the first book I've written. I hasten to add that it wasn't a book book, it was a biography of a local politician written for pay. It was a bigger project than most that I'd undertaken in my life, it was longer, more comprehensive than most, and so forth. And there was a certain responsibility in sitting in someone's living room, listening to her story, and then going away and writing something that would make her feel her life had meaning. I had a lot to work with—she was avid about constituent service, if you needed a form from the state capital or whatever she'd take care of it—and she had quite a few solid accomplishments. But no matter how useful a life a person has led, when you write about that life there's always the question, have I done him or her justice? In this I was fortunate: There was a tribute to her in the local paper when she retired, and a letter writer had said that he saw her in her office, working late, many times but never thanked her for her service but wanted her to know her appreciated it. I used that for the ending, and I think it worked reasonably well. 

This wasn't a book book because it was self-published. (Such things used to be called "vanity presses.") She paid money to have it done, and I got money to do it. You can't buy it on Amazon. So when a friend said "You're a published author," I said, "Well, I'm a printed author." But then today I did something I've been putting off—I took all the printed-out chapters of a young adult novel I've been working on and read them straight through. Partly I did this to see how they flowed, to find transition gaps, missing or misplaced parts, that sort of thing. But also it was to get a sense of the whole and see if it was a big pile of twaddle or not. And it seems I may have something to work with here. A second draft is very much called for, but I think the patient may live. It might, in other words, someday be a book book. At any rate, it seems to justify going forward with the next steps, of which there are many. But it's going. Whaddaya know?