Hardcover in the house

So here’s my experience of receiving one hardcover copy of STILTSVILLE (and only the one I’ve received so far — my editor sent it out hot off the presses, and my contract copies will follow at a later date):

The package arrived. I opened it. Then I put the book high up on a shelf, and ignored it for twenty-four hours.

The toddler agrees with Booklist that Mama's book is "written with great delicacy and discretion"!

I can’t say why, exactly. After twenty-four hours, I started circling it like a buzzard, stealing sideways glances. Finally, I picked it up. I looked again at my weird author photo. I read the acknowledgments, tentatively.

On my next circle around, I picked it up again and read one paragraph from the middle of the book. OK, that wasn’t too painful. I actually kind of enjoyed it. Maybe I’ll read another . . .

Another twenty-four hours later, I’d read roughly fifty paragraphs, all chosen at random, and all while standing next to the bookshelf, ready to drop the book back into the shelf at any moment.

But, hey, this isn’t so bad! I thought. I actually like a few of these sentences. I’m not cringing at every turn of phrase — I actually think some of this reads pretty well! Sure, I’d change this word if I had another go at it, and I’d maybe drop this sentence, and maybe add something here to clarify meaning . . . But again, I’m not having tremors or running screaming from the book.

To my surprise, I was actually kind of enjoying the experience of reading random chunks of my novel.

Twenty-four hours later, I sat down on my living room sofa, the book in hand. My toddler son was shooting hoops on the back porch, my husband was making dinner. I opened the book at the very beginning, on the dedication page.

I read the title page, the blank pages, and the first page of the first chapter. Still not so bad. I sipped from my lemonade. I relaxed.

Then, my stomach dropped. There it was. What I’d been dreading, and what I knew — though I hoped against hope — I would eventually find.

A typo. And not deep into the novel, around page 200 or so, where it might be swept up into the momentum of the narrative. No, this typo is on page 9.

Let me say that I pride myself on being a pretty clean writer. Even my first drafts are pretty clean, though not perfect, of course. I have training as an editor, and still read with that eye for mistakes. But what I didn’t realize before going through the publishing process is that most of the typos in a book — and there are always typos in a book — are not made by the author, because the author’s mistakes are fixed early on by the slew of editors, proofreaders, and copyeditors who work on the manuscript when it’s at its roughest.

That’s not to place blame elsewhere, but rather to highlight how many times a book is read — and improved — before it’s published, and how many times fixes are made. And we all know what happens when we mark up a manuscript and then input our corrections — a few new little typos are made. And then those are fixed and a [much smaller] number of even newer typos are made. And then those are corrected, and so on.

The book must be get out the door sometime, after all.

I understand how it happens, and I am certain that the people who worked on it did much, much, much more good than harm. But still, I had to put the book down. I will probably pick it up again when that feeling that makes my stomach turn and my shoulders tighten and my face flush fades a little.

And really, it’s wonderful to finally have the finished product, even if it’s just going to sit on a shelf. It’s wonderful to put it in my toddler son’s lap and watch him point to the jacket photo and say, “Mama!”

“That’s right,” I tell him. “Mama’s book.”  Mama’s book. My book. And, truly, I couldn’t be more thrilled.

–Sd