Editing

I’ve been working on a book of memoirs on a brief span of years in my past. It is a private thing not for publication and I wanted to send it to a friend for Christmas and so last night, as they say in the printing business, we put the book to bed.  For a couple of weeks now I have been trying to get the bugs out of the manuscript and out of my new computer and the book will be mailed today.  This effort  resembles getting a baby ready to go out into the world. I’ve tried cleaning it up, straightening up some of the grammar, doing a spell check and getting the margins and such in line. My wife Jean has helped me with the birth.  We had a ring binding put on it and out she goes.  I know that if I messed with it another two months that there would still be some flaws that I overlooked. Little boo boos that are cunning and elusive.  You have probably noticed that they keep slipping into this newsletter. (Sometimes I tell folks I put them in there to bring joy to nit pickers but it is a lie.) Some folks I know never send anything out because they don’t want to be caught making a boo boo.  With every creative creation some time you just have to let go.  A number of fine writers had editors that would simply come to their homes and literally rip the manuscript from the screaming, protesting authors hands. James Michener was one of these.When I was in audio-video production I used to have to wrestle the finished audio tracks out of the hands of our sound man.  Such is life. Some times you must do the very best you can in the time provided and then let go.