Surgeons have often been accused of being emotionally removed from the patient they’re operating on, removing ‘this’ and ‘rewiring’ that. I could relate to that as I performed literary ‘surgery’ on my radio book manuscript, making the cuts, edits, and corrections recommended by Jo Scheier. Focusing on the technical and grammatical, I found myself detached from the feeling of the 50 pieces that comprise the book, and vaguely remembered the emotion I invested in the writing of those pieces. It was almost as if someone else wrote the damn thing. Yes, ‘damn thing’, because by this time I was growing bored with, and tired of looking at the words I had written and rewritten and picked at and parsed. A voice in my head was saying, “I wrote it, I put my heart and soul in it, now just publish it, I’m done with it.” The adult voice in my head reasoned, “If you are serious about getting this published you have to follow the form and procedures established and followed by the industry.” 

I should have known better. I had always submitted my pieces to literary magazines double spaced as required on Submittable. But, for some unfathonable reason, every one of the 50 pieces in my radio book were one and one half spaced. Many pieces I had written earlier were, again for reasons unknown to even me, in Calibri font, not the industry preferred Times New Roman. So, after about three weeks making the edits and rewrites suggested by Jo, I spent another week changing font and spacing for the entire book. While I am embarrassed by my rookie spacing and font mistakes, I think there’s a lesson here. It is natural to write with emotion and fervor, but if you intend to try to publish what you’re writing, check out the format that a prospective publication or agent wants to receive submissions. Otherwise, you’re just delaying the process, making more work for yourself, or sending in something sure to be rejected.

Edits made, formats corrected, I have sent the entire book manuscript to Patty Zion, who I have hired to be my final editor. She will make sure it is up to Chicago Manual of Style standards. This too was something I was only vaguely aware of, and by reviewing Patty’s edits I will try to at least have some knowledge of, to make my future writing more immediately in conformity. Patty will also be putting the book together in the order that I want page by page, hopefully with the pages ‘holding’ went sent. This is a problem I encountered in a previous book effort—the page numbers slipped and appeared, out of place, in the body of the copy. What Patty will email back to me will be a file that I will then be able to send out to agents who express an interest in the book.

So, all I have to do now until Patty finishes is sit back and wait, right? Wrong. The next steps, as explained to me in much appreciated detail and example by Jo Scheier is to find prospective agents and do a proposal about the book to send to them. Both of these ‘steps’ are really more like scavenger hunts, going down dead ends and into dark alleys. Thankfully, there are online resources that can lead you to listings of literary agents and that describe the genres that they are interested in seeking to place with publishers. I will be looking for agents who are interested in seeing memoirs, and books relating to pop culture and history. From the examples I’ve seen of authors’ book proposals, the effort and content  of the proposal rivals that of the original manuscript. The sense I’m getting is that the quality of the book, while important, is secondary to its commercial viability. I will have to write a proposal that makes a strong marketing case for my book. It is obvious to me now that my creative efforts did not end when I wrote the 60,081th word of my book.