Kristen Hall-Geisler

A green mechanical pencil lays across a printed manuscript, which is open to chapter 15 and has a correction penciled in the margin.

This Was Supposed to Be a Book Review

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by

Kristen
in , , ,

I have notes, quotes, and a half-assed draft of a book review waiting in the Wingback wings. This was the weekend I was going to pull it all together and publish it on Monday.

However.

Memoirs of a French Courtesan Volume 2: Spectacle has been to the proofreader and the layout has been completed. I printed out the finished file so that I could do a proof in layout, where I check to make sure that there aren’t any weird-looking things, like a single word at the top of a page, or a paragraph that didn’t get indented, or a chapter title that isn’t formatted correctly. The last-minute things that all happen before a book is sent to the printer.

However.

When I started to do a quick scan of the pages, I realized that there were still mistakes—not a million, but enough that a reader would definitely notice. Missing helping verbs, missing articles, those kinds of small things. These are all my mistakes, of course. The proofreader didn’t introduce them. But they didn’t find them, either. Which is frustrating, since I thought we’d tackled all of these kinds of issues already and were nearly ready for print.

However.

I am attempting to use all that I have learned from a regular Buddhist meditation practice, decades in publishing, and plain old middle-aged wisdom to just fucking deal with this. It’s not so bad. In some ways, it’s even good. As long as I’m reading the manuscript again, I’m finding places where a different word would be a better choice, or where a sentence could be revised for better flow. These are the kinds of tweaks most writers would keep making until the end of time if a publication date didn’t loom, forcing us to throw up our hands and say, “Fine!” So it’s an opportunity, right? Sure. Let’s go with that.

However.

Paying this kind of attention to the manuscript is taking up all of my writerly bandwidth this weekend, leaving me none for writing the book review I wanted to write. (It’s an essay more than a review.) I had just enough juice left after the most recent session with Spectacle to write you this note, which is hasty and not very well thought out.

However.

Not only do you now know that I have another book review for you, you also know that I genuinely care about the books I publish. I care about every word on the page, and I want to be sure you get the absolute best version I can create each time. I like setting a high standard for myself and meeting it, because I like it when readers appreciate the books on the other end of this process (thank you, reviewers who have given Volume 1: Rebellion four out of five stars on Goodreads!).

In the meantime, please enjoy the cover of Spectacle, created by designer Jenny Kimura, because I do.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Wingback to get the 13-week summer reading newsletter! I’ll be posting once a week for all subscribers, free or paid, June 6 through August 29, using the National Book Foundation’s Summer Reading Adventure as a guide. Subscribers will also be entered to win a copy of both Rebellion and Spectacle on Labor Day. Details in this post.