Tangible

Not a lot of blogging going on of late, which is good, as I am quite bereft without something to feel guilty about. I’ve made great strides in the proposal, and can’t count on any guilt from that quarter, so it’s good to have an infrequently updated blog to fall back on.

At last, I know what the book’s about. Mostly. I have a Selling Handle that made me cringe to write. (I think I may have a problem with capitalism. I know. You’re shocked. We’ll see how much of a problem I have with it when I cash the check.) I have a Concept Statement, and a page called About the Author. That was more difficult to write about than I thought it would be, but gosh, it’s nice to write about a subject you really know. I have several pages written About the Competition, which isn’t about competition at all, so much as describing what books are likely to be on the same shelf of the bookstore as my book.

My book. I love saying that. If I swear by all that is holy never to utter the words, “As I say in my book…”, once it is published, can I be just a little insufferable now?

Moving along, the next section of the proposal was About the Book, which was hard going because I had no idea what the book was about. “Well, it’s like scouting, but different, and there’s some knitting, and some badges…”

I had to skip About the Book, and add it to the tail end of the month when, hopefully, I will know what’s in the book, and be able to write about it. With that out of the way it should have been full steam ahead, but then I hit a passage in Book Proposals 101 that read, “After your preliminary research, you’ll have some sort of files, note cards or jottings. Divide this information into groups…”

Jottings? I was supposed to jot?

I panicked, before remembering that I have badges. Who needs jottings! I have badges. Tonia helped me divide the material up, arrange it, and find connections. And then, there it was. My table of contents.

Of course almost a month has elapsed since I felt the heady TOC excitement of my book, made tangible, and it’s been kind of a hard slog of a month as I fumble around looking for where I last left my voice. I wrote two BEAUTIFUL pages of prose, honest to god I felt invincible and like use of the English language was my super power — “All shall love me and despair!” — I read it over and over again before I realized, lovely as it was, it read like the opening of a dissertation. A kick ass dissertation, to be sure, but not really what I was going for. Not at all. And it only took me an entire day to realize that, and only a weekend to let go of those two pages of beautiful prose. So there’s some progress. But I still mourn their loss.

I needn’t have worried about the voice though. I found it again after reading old stuff I’d written for the podcast. I don’t know why writing for the podcast, or here, for that matter, is different than Writing the Book, but it is, and I’d much rather it wasn’t. (Note to self – it’s all just writing, now get on with it.)

Re: the hate video – I realized reading your comments that I was so busy feeling outraged by the anti gay hate speech, I hardly noticed the perverted Christian doctrine. Seriously, I had to go back and watch it it again. “Did she even mention the bible? Oh, yes. There it is, of course she did.”

Reminds me of a gay Jewish comedian I once saw, who could not believe his ears when someone called him a “kike” (which is a really bad word for a Jew, so don’t ever use it) and he totally thought the guy had said “dyke”. And he was like, “Well, you’re close…” Then he finally twigged what the guy had said, and he realized that homophobia was SO distracting, he sometimes just forgot all about antisemitism.