Drinking Coffee and Bingeing Videos: Part Two of Publishing an Essay Collection

by Sandra Gail Lambert

Drinking Coffee and Bingeing Videos: Part Two of Publishing an Essay Collectionby Sandra Gail Lambert

On Solstice Day I turned in the manuscript for My Withered Legs and Other Essays to the University of Georgia Press. In February the staff editor introduced himself and besides letting me know a freelance copyeditor would be receiving the manuscript soon, asked if I would be in town for the next nine months. Sure, I replied. But I don't think he meant that I should pin my butt in the bed, stuff pillows behind my back, drink coffee, and binge on distasteful-in-so-many-ways series like Bluebloods and Seal Team Six until the book is published almost a year from now. (There's an essay right there about why that type of show compels me. Having grown up a military brat?) But it's April now and that's what I'm still doing.

I have good reasons. Pam has had two breast cancer surgeries since her diagnosis. We have spent long hours in cold, claustrophobic examining rooms. We have cancelled reservations for a sweet cabin in the woods because of radiation schedules that were then put off because an essential test hadn't been ordered. The old dog is feeling her age. I'm feeling my age. We take pain meds together.

But since I first sent out queries for this book, even before then, I've tried to get going on another project. I know I have to. Many times I've told other writers they had to using my insistent, bossy voice. Still, I have no new project. I have many ideas, and I have made many lists. Here’s one of them.

• Keep working on THE UNITY, which is a sequel to The Sacrifice Zone.

• Pull together the yellow pad pages of what I call "Trip Notes" with the idea that perhaps I have a good start on a collection of travel essays.

• Write a brand new novel that expands from a short story that was recently published.

• Turn The Sacrifice Zone into an e-book. But first get permission to use that forty word excerpt from an Adrienne Rich poem.

• Gather notes for what might become companion essays for this next book.

• Revamp the look and content of the Substack page now that the novel serialization is complete and write more pieces to post.

• Write another speculative short story, flash this time.

I’ve organized both physical and computer files. I have poked into already created documents and added a paragraph here and there. I sent a query off to Norton about the Rich poem. No final word yet, but I have a public-domain-as-of-this-year elegiac Millay poem ready to plop in the funeral scene instead. I've reordered the list many times. I edited, again, the 115,528 words of The Sacrifice Zone, created a kick-ass cover image, and uploaded them to an e-book service to be released on May 15th. Which turned out to be a good first thing to pick from the list because I become more fond of this novel every time I read it. So the editing gave me a brief boost of writer bravado. I have told myself to now pick one more thing off the list, one thing, it doesn't matter which one, and just do that and it doesn't matter if it sucks and never turns into anything worth anything, just write.

Right now, I’m on a solo writing retreat at a hotel on the strip of a Florida beach town. I hoped the shame of wasting our Hilton points would kickstart the writing. It didn't at first. I despaired even as I kept clicking on the next dog video. I'd like to say I remembered how this is how it always is on a retreat and so let myself sink with peace into the mindlessness and know it was a necessary part of awakening the creative urge or at least a smidge of discipline, but that would be untrue. I had anguish. I was disgusted with myself. I don't think I outright lied, but I muttered and changed the subject to eating at a taco shack when Pam asked how it was going. And now, on day two of the retreat, I am writing. I picked one item on the list, actually a sub-item, and I'm writing this essay, a part two of the publishing story of this upcoming (in a year) collection.

Back to that narrative. The freelance copyeditor did send the edits in early March. But first, here's a heads up about publishing an essay collection that might be helpful. Keep exact documentation about who owns the rights to any previously published essays. I have six of these included in the collection. For New Letters, The Sun, The NYT, The Paris Review, and the Writer's Chronicle, I had copies of the contracts ready to send to the University of Georgia Press. But for those three hundred words about my mother's death that Sweet: A Literary Confection published and then made into a chapbook as a fundraiser in 2013, I had nothing. Sweet is still a vibrant online journal, so I emailed and within a day they got back to me with the info needed. Getting information from a less responsive journal or one that was defunct could have become a problem. Book publishers insist that you have solid proof before they’ll proceed. Also, when the editor tried to verify the Writer's Chronicle piece, they couldn't find it. That's because I forgot to mention that in the original version I was one of four authors and then I had extracted my part and expanded it and changed the title from “Success and the Late Blooming Author” to “Old Lady Dabbler.” Oops.

Back to the copyeditor. She said it was already a carefully prepared manuscript so there wasn't much to change. This is just the sort of thing that makes perfectionist me purr in smug self-satisfaction. And she gave me ideas for where to kayak in the Pacific Northwest and attached a photo of an otter sniffing her paddle. And of course, she did notice problems. The first time through I was all “oh, sorry, you're right,” “this is for sure confusing,” “what was I thinking,” “yes, change it to whatever you said.” And this was even though she was very clear that her suggestions were just that. Thank goodness I waited a week and then looked through it again. This time I, for me, stetted the heck out of it. "Stet" means to leave as is. And "for me" means that most often I took her suggestions but not always.

By the end of March she sent the "final clean files" to the publisher. A week later the staff editor let me know a preliminary production schedule had been set. He'd have page proofs to me by early June. It was a simple sentence, but it discombobulated me. And not just because they will probably arrive on my seventy-first birthday. But also because right then was when I no longer got to change anything. Not the order of the essays, not the dedication, not a paragraph or sentence. Maybe I could change a word, maybe. My video binging doubled down into me letting episodes run one after another but mostly just listening because at the same time I was playing Candy Crush on my phone. I was perversely proud when, without ever paying for lives or boosters, I reached Level 2987.  

And now there is the expected silence from the publisher. After the proofs arrive, the next big moment will be the cover image. I don't think it's an accident that the editor did not share the part of the preliminary production schedule that gives a date for that. Which is a good idea. When it comes to covers, we authors (Surely, not me.) have a tendency to be the online version of kids on a car trip smacking the back of the driver's seat and asking if we're there yet.

So this is the time to get work done. I have today and two more days left on this retreat. Maybe I'll type in the yellow pages of notes taken from our trip out west last October. What with the Southwest scheduling snafus, the view of my wheelchair sitting on the tarmac in a torrent of rain, getting kicked out of our Grand Canyon hotel room on a sixteen degree night, my Florida terror at driving switch back roads with thousand foot drops three feet away from our wheels, and a kayak trip down the Colorado River a piece of writing might not suck. It might turn into something worth something.

Audio Version: