For the next two weeks, I edited Soul Portrait several times. Talk about a maddening process. If you have spell-check, that takes care of a lot of sloppy mistakes; but when I came across 'as', meant to be 'at', I knew I'd have to keep checking. Over and over again, I read that book. I have read books with glaring typographical errors, and I always think, "How could they possibly have missed that? The poor author!" Now, I see how it can happen.
When you send in a book to be self-published, unless you have paid extra money to have them edit for you, everything must be exactly as you want it. It has to look exactly the way you want it and be spelled exactly as you intend. Exactly. If you see a typo after they already have it on their computers, you pay 25 dollars overall for them to take the time to correct text, in addition to 2 dollars per correction. I was in a tizzy making sure it was picture perfect.
Finally, the day came when I was ready to send it off. It was September 13. My husband was fishing in Canada (where we used to live), and I had 10 days to myself. Talk about heaven. I sure do love that man; but having the house and kitchen to myself for over a week was wonderful -- even if I did spend the whole time on Soul Portrait. The best thing was being able to eat pasta almost every night: fresh basil, diced garden-ripe tomatoes, shopped (see what I mean?) garlic, and red pepper flakes bathed in red wine vinegar and EVOO (as Rachel Ray calls it), then eagerly dumped on top of hot angel hair pasta and topped with crumbled feta cheese. He wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole. It's not as much fun to eat something your spouse turns up his nose at; so I was able to savor each delightful mouthful in peace. But I digress.
This was it! I took a deep breath and hit the 'send' button. Then I called my hubby, told him to put the phone away from his ear, and proceeded to scream from Oregon to Ontario that it was gone, finished, mission accomplished!! He was really happy for me -- at least I like to think his delight was all for me. Actually, he could have been even more relieved that he'd never again have to hear me read re-edited sections aloud to him. Soul Portrait was born in 2000, and here it is 2011. I haven't worked on it steadily, of course; but we both knew it was high time to let it go.
I was getting out my wine to raise a glass to myself when I decided I'd better make sure it got to Dog Ear in one piece. I went straight to my 'sent' e-mails, only to find it was a mess on my end, so I called to see if they were reading the same thing I was. They were. The spacing was off and several paragraphs were in all caps. Come to find out, the word processing program I used was not compatible with theirs. It's called Open Office, and it was put into my computer by a "I-know-what-I'm-doing", really young, really well-intentioned computer nerd. My helper at Dog Ear (nice guy named Mark) had thought if I sent it off in rtf (rich text format), it would come through okay. It didn't. He was gracious enough to count that as a trial run, so I sent it off again on the 14th, thinking I had converted it to Microsoft Word. No luck; Open Office was still in charge. Mark was still gracious and very patient with my frantic attempts to get control of my computer. I started to hyperventilate, but drank my wine that night anyway. After all, I had taken the first step. Now, I just needed to think.
The only way for me to do this right was to re-type the entire book. By sheer luck and pressing lots of keys, I found an unadulterated version of MS Word on my computer and got started. After I was done, I went in to make and save a couple changes. I couldn't edit. My Word document was locked up. I hit a few more keys, but was at a loss. I immediately called a reputable geek who told me to bring in my laptop. He fixed me up and I came back home to finalize my changes and make sure nothing else had gone awry.
Anyone of you who has read Soul Portrait knows it isn't a huge tome, but it took me the rest of the 14th and all day the 15th to get it done to my satisfaction....then more editing. I placed all the phones under pillows or in drawers so I couldn't hear them ring (I don't know how to turn off the entire system). I let e-mails sit until I needed a break, and I only breathed fresh air when our golden, Molly Margaret McBain, promised me she really, really had to go out to pee. I had done that for almost 10 days anyway; but this time, I didn't even look at messages left on the phone system to see if there were any emergencies or if my mate had caught his dream Muskie and won the family tournament. I had my own emergency. I'm easily distracted, and this was my last chance. It worked. Everything worked, and all was well. I sent it off a third time, and you know what they say about the third time.
My professional photo, taken on the 16th, came out just fine (my neck never looked so good); this week, I'll get that off to Dog Ear, along with a brief bio and back cover text for Soul Portrait. In a few days, I meet with the photographer again to hopefully choose one of her Nature photos for the cover of the book. Then, I wait. Mark tells me it could be 4 months, so chances are good Soul Portrait won't be under anyone's Christmas tree. That's okay. If it's worth doing, it's worth waiting for. I can wait.
Mt. Hood