This past weekend, I finished looking over the copy-edits for The Hard Sell of Paradise, which is set for publication this coming March. This was a very significant moment in the process not because the book is finally ready to be published but because it’s the last time I’ll ever be able to make significant changes to the wording of the manuscript.
There’s still the last phase of reviewing the final proofs—when the words, images, and so forth, are laid out in the same format as they’ll appear in the final book version, but that’s strictly a proofreading and indexing project, since any last minute revisions to the wording itself become more costly. It was my last chance to get things as close to “good enough” as I’ll ever be able to.
Of course, I didn’t have much time to work on it, for the same reason I’ve not been blogging since the summer—my full-time teaching at OSU doesn’t allow much free time for such indulgences during the fall and spring. At the same time, it is nice to take a break from writing anyway—I can admit now that I was burned out with the Payne project by mid-July (not in a bad way; I was perfectly productive, but at a certain point one has earned a break). When I return to it at some point in the near future, I know it’ll be better for the time I took away from it. And I still think this time next year I will have a complete first draft finished—my general interest in writing again gradually coming back to me.
A lot have happened since my last post.
I just remembered that I never shared the cover for the book.
I won’t lie—I liked an earlier version better. While it’s supposed to evoke a classic, mid-20th century tourist postcard aesthetic, the cheap photoshop elements undercut the effect and I worry they will create a similar impression for some readers regarding the contents of the book itself.
But at least it’s not hula girls or Elvis. And I do like the colors and I’m sincerely grateful that I at least got to keep my original title for the project (crappy university press ideas for click-bait titles can be not only unfortunate but down right disastrous).
Anyway, it was a melancholic few days recently as I tried to look over the manuscript yet again. There was no time to read it all cover to cover (the book will probably be close to 350 pages—by far the longest one I’ve ever, and probably will ever, write), but when I had a few hours each night the last few weeks I would dip in here and there (reviewing most of it in bits and pieces, like fragments of a fading dream)—answering all copy editor queries (mainly to check if quotations were accurate) but also to see if there are any places where I can still improve the general wording. Important mistakes were caught (and no doubt one or two will probably remain . . . sigh).
There was a major factual error I finally noticed at the end of the Michener chapter (one based on my own presumptive and faulty interpretation of a source) and I’m a little humbled by how I never noticed that before. It was something that a causal reader might not think twice about (and the editor didn’t catch it either) but information which I should’ve realized pretty early on didn’t sound right.
There weren’t too many substantive additions to the rest of the manuscript, other than I expanded on the last few pages a little bit more. The original ending was too general and too abrupt, so I clarified and nuanced it a little more to give it more intellectual heft (and also to subtly foreshadow future projects!).
I know I write a lot about nostalgia, but when it comes to writing, I don’t typically look back. (I think I actually understand the impulse all too well—its powers, its dangers, its general ambivalences—which is why I write about it more than wallow in it. A post for another day).
When I finish a book, I do mourn in a way, but then I tend to move on—I don’t reread it, I don’t even think about the subject or ideas much (it’s been shocking to me the last few weeks how little I am anticipating PTA’s next film, for example). I appreciate kind words, of course, but I try not to think either way about what others think. The whole project becomes externalized from me on some deep level.
Only the occasional continuing flare-ups around Song of the South keeps that old project mildly on my radar—I had pitched a second edition to UT around the time of Karina Longworth’s high-profile podcast about it, mainly with more of an eye towards finally negotiating the public debate it unexpectedly became a part of (basically to revise it to be more of the book people assumed or expected it to be, instead of what it actually was), but they declined. I think my interest in that has waned now anyway.
I had forgotten the immense feelings of withdraw and sadness when you finally, finally, have to let go of a project you’ve been working on for several years. In this case, I can trace ideas for this book back to at least 2009, when I was still working on my dissertation, for which this new book will always be its spiritual sequel. I first got serious about researching and brainstorming a project on this in 2013-2014, with the first writing beginning in summer and fall of 2015. So when it finally is published it will be almost a full decade—the high emotions are understandable in retrospect, I guess. That emptiness though has been a positive in recent days, as I find myself thinking again about filling the void, moving onto the Payne project, which I haven’t worked on at all in basically three months, and am now more anxious than I’ve been in a little while to get back to writing once time allows.
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A final note—I may or may not blog again very soon about a topic that might not surprise anyone who’s been following my work for a long time. We’ll see if the time and/or interest is there when the moment arrives.
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