One week ago I
printed out the completed, rough-edited version of my book manuscript for
the first time.
I felt like a little
kid—the excitement was palpable:
I could’ve cried big fat
tears of relief, or joy.
I could’ve yelled or
squealed or giggled hysterically at the top of my lungs.
I was absolutely sure I
was at least as excited as each of my
clients as they have done the same task-cum-ritual—probably I was more so
though. I was just that elated!
I did jump up and down a few times in my office as page after fresh
page came rolling out the mouth of the printer and laid itself to rest on the
tray extension.
I had one small moment of
angst when the printer ran out of paper (it only holds fifty sheets at a time)
and I saw a puny stack of pages. But then I remembered how it prints out the
last page first; page 92 lying on top indicated that only about 54 pages (a third of the book) had printed out so far. I felt much better about the appropriately ample girth of the
manuscript when I had to repeatedly take small hunks to hole punch all of the
pages. Silly but true.
It really didn’t matter
that this is the third book I’m publishing. Somehow it felt better—much, much
better—than the first, and the second. I don’t fully understand why, nor do I
much care.
Those of us who toil over
months or years to write a book, do feel a special pride when the first printed
pages arrive—the best gift to oneself—on the printer.
This first tangible act of
picking it up,
feeling the weight,
flipping through the
third-of-a-ream,
seeing our name in the
font we’ve chosen …
all those black words on
white paper that lived in some unidentifiable place within our bodies, the
release of which actually does make us feel, literally, physically lighter …
noticing how the ideas
march line by line and page by page to form chapters and introductions and
conclusions,
respecting the formality
of a thing made manifest and forgetting for a moment that it is just we who did
this (though many of us attribute the grace of something greater than us to the
inspired bits we don’t really remember writing but which divinely appeared on
the finally printed copy),
imagining the bound book
it will be on the other side of the publishing process—ISBN, copyright, words
on the spine, front/back cover image and design, acknowledgments and
dedication, author bio and photo, binding and paper
this all becomes a sacred
process: spirit and sweat made wholly holy as original thought becomes
everlasting ink on a page.
I shamelessly celebrated
the printing out, and I breathlessly and light-headedly entered the long
weekend aloft on the-vague-notion-that-transformed-into-something-I-can-hold-in-my-hands.
We must embrace these
moments, embrace ourselves, ritualize and celebrate, sanctify, share our joy.
We are made greater by the community of enthusiastics who encourage, support,
ground, listen to, and shamelessly girly-squeal-in-delight with us!
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2017 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
