Necessary Distance
When I start out a book, it never seems like I’ll have a chance of finishing it. Although I’ve written several, it’s like standing at the foot of a mountain and wondering how I’ll ever top it. Doing it over and over again gives me a semblance of confidence, but since each book is its own challenge, it’s like climbing a different mountain in the range each time. I know I should be able to make it to the top, but I have to find a different route every time.
Like most climbers, I enjoy the challenge, and part of what keeps me going is the lure of new peaks to top. A perverse part of me wants to look for bigger, steeper pinnacles to reach, and for some reason I keep giving in to that.
Once I’m done with the book, I get that same exhilarating sense of accomplishment. And—I don’t know if climbers feel this way, but I sure do—I never want to see that book again. I’m done, it’s behind me. Reading it only reminds me of the many unsure choices I made some of which I might have made differently had I known how it was all going to end up. I just can’t bring myself to do it.
A few months after that, though, I have to. The edits come back from the publisher, and it’s my job to go through and make sure that the suggested corrections are in fact correct. That means slogging through the manuscript one more time, watching someone else point out where I went flat wrong and second-guessing some of my other choices.
Once I get through that, the book can sometimes come back to me yet again for a last-second galley check. Changes at this point are expensive to implement, and I’m often tempted to just report back that the book is fine as is without even bothering to open the package in which it arrived. Instead, though, I always go through it once more, making sure that it’s as good as the editorial team and I can make it. It’s my name on the cover, after all, and I owe that much to anyone who pays for it.
It’s not until months or years later that I can go back and enjoy the book. This most often happens when I have to write a sequel and can’t recall what happened in the first book in the necessary exacting detail such a project requires. It’s then, after I’ve forgotten the contents of the book, that I can come back at it fresh.
It’s at these times that I’m least critical of my work and I can finally read it with new eyes. It’s almost like I’m reading someone else’s book, written by an author who knows exactly how to push all my buttons—in the best way. Having put that particular mountain so far behind me, I can now marvel at it along with (hopefully) everyone else.
