Seacoast History Blog # 121 
July 11, 2011

Writers are like movie actors except that most of us writers aren’t handsome and we can’t act. But we both live in and out of time machines. Like a movie, it can take years to get a history book from concept and research to design and publication. That requires a ton of advance planning. By the time the final product arrives, the writer and the movie actor have moved on to other jobs. Then suddenly, we’re snapped back into the past. I’m working today, for example, on the page proofs of AMERICA’S PRIVATEER, my book on the tall ship Lynx and the War of 1812. I proposed it in 2008, then wrote and research it for 18 months in 2009 and 2010. A year in design, it’s now inching its way toward publication for the bicentennial of the “Forgotten War” in 2012. When it comes out, ideally this holiday season, it will be brand new to you and four years old to me. (Continue below)

Writers inevitably compare their books to children. I think this is my tenth, and I’m forever amazed by how much a book grows up between the time it leaves my desk as a typed manuscript and the time it returns fleshed out on the page. It’s as if my little book went away to finishing school. It has been shaped by the designer, dressed up in scores of colorful photographs, disciplined by the editor, and polished by the proofreader.

It’s too late for major repair. All I can do at this phase is to read the text through carefully one final time and look for errors that can be fixed without messing up the carefully designed pages. As you can see in the sneak preview below, I’ve indicated a few corrections on bits of yellow sticky paper. The spiral bound mock-up from the digital file gives an almost exact view of the final book. In the metaphor of books-as-kids, I can do little more than comb this one’s hair and brush off his clothes before he disappears into the real world. My job is done. He’s on his own now, hopefully to make a name for himself. If so, then all next year I will proudly shout --“That’s my boy!” – while back home his baby sister is, even now, taking her first steps.

© 2011 by J. Dennis Robinson at SeacoastNH.com All rights reserved

(c) SeacaostNH.com
Galley proof courtesy Lynx Educational Foundation