The Blog Becomes A Book

Jun 12, 2011 by winjaw

The Little Black Dress says I am sparse with words.

This usually occurs when I do not fawn sufficiently to her tastes. I will say, “that’s really good.” She prefers I start with something like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and continue from there, ending with something involving “greatest thing/blog/shoes/dress/whatever since sliced bread, the ice maker or the internet.”

The Dress never met an adjective or adverb she didn’t cherish and savor. I cut them with zeal; she adopts them.

There is a point to all this, which I am slowly and uncharacteristically getting to. Enough with the drama.

I hold in my hands the typeset manuscript of my latest endeavor. Technically, I’m not holding it in my hands, but rather looking at a PDF version that was e-mailed to me. So, in reality, the computer is holding it in its hands, if computers have hands that is.

Compared to my first book, Everyone Needs A Sam, this one is massive. Sam was about 25,000 words; this one tops 75,000. The Complete Works of Shakespeare up against The Little Engine That Could.

The title? The Little Black Dress and the Sons of Thunder * Recipes on Life and Food *

I leave it to my faithful readers to decipher the subject matter.

To those less initiated, let us say it is a 10-year endeavor. It is a collection, selected by yours truly with help from The Dress, of my favorite columns and blog posts over that time period. Yes, I’ve actually written columns/blogs for that long.

The best of the best; the creme de la creme; the cat’s meow; Nirvana; Utopia; Heaven on earth; the reason for being; why you wake up in the morning; pure awesomeness …

I think I covered the bases to the LBD’s satisfaction.

The majority of this collection you’ve read here. Which raises the question of why the book? The simple answer is The Dress will need a new dress, and shoes, and purses, and magazines and related paraphernalia. The Sons want to go to college.

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You will, hopefully, laugh, cry, think and find a few fun recipes to try out.

And now the fun begins – editing this tome to find those typos or wrong words that make me, well, look stupid. On the first go-round, I found 39 changes. Some I will blame on the typesetting; others, well, what the heck was I thinking and how did I miss that and I’ve been doing this for more than 25 years and a first-grader would have caught that and dumb, dumb, dumb and where did that word come from and …

Ugh.

But if my math is correct, I’m batting a 99.9994827 success rate. That in itself is perfectly acceptable, but for someone like me, even one typo pretty much makes your skin crawl.

So we continue to review. The cover design is underway and I anxiously await to see what my team of experts comes up with. Yes, it’s about as nerve-wracking as wondering if your newborn will have your nose or your spouse’s. And you just wait, knowing it’s out of your hands.

And so we wait … and edit.

Stay tuned.