Book #2 is through proofreading!
go, little rubber ducky, go
Friends,
A former colleague, Brad, once told me he’s literally never read a book without finding a typo in it.
Not one single book.
To be honest, I’m not totally sure I believe it. Surely someone somewhere has written a book where the editors and the copy editors and the proofreaders and the author themselves managed to catch all the mistakes?
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Brad tends to read books published by people less careful about this sort of thing. Who knows.
Either way, I found myself thinking of him this week. Because I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the last couple of weeks giving Book #2, Maybe We Could Pray Again, a careful read-through, trying to find as many issues as possible.
My first publisher told me I was “straining gnats” when I did this with Nice Churchy Patriarchy. (Yes and…isn’t that what we want? Aren’t our interests aligned in trying to make sure the final version of the book includes as few errors as possible?)
Fortunately, the publisher I’m working with now (Broadleaf Books, love them so much!) encourages the process. They even have a professional proofreader doing the same thing I’ve been doing at the same time. I’m so curious to see who finds more issues.
Just kidding. Mostly. It’s not a competition. But I am curious to compare results and see what they found that I would have missed.
I share all this because I thought you might enjoy a small behind-the-scenes update on the progress of Maybe We Could Pray Again, which is set to release next March. (So close, yet so far away!)
I once spoke with a literary agent who told me she has a set of rubber duckies sitting on her desk. Each one represents an author she works with.
She keeps them there to remind her of where each person is in the process of crafting book proposals, having those proposals submitted to different publishing houses, and hopefully eventually signing a contract with a publisher.
I do not have rubber duckies on my desk. But I thought of that agent this week, too. If Maybe We Could Pray Again were a rubber ducky, it would be chugging along in the process. Paddling its cute little legs, swimming slowly but surely toward its launch into our world. Looking more and more like a book every time I see it.
It’s typeset now, which means its pages look like book pages and not just a Google doc turned into a Word doc. It’s all formatted like it will be when it’s ready to order. And I must say it’s looking good.
I don’t know whether my former colleague Brad will ever read Maybe We Could Pray Again. If he does, I don’t know if he will find any typos in it. He might catch something.
Fortunately, although I believe in giving things like this as much careful attention as possible, perfection is not the goal. It’s impossible. And it’s not the point.
No matter what, Maybe We Could Pray Again will not be a perfect book. But I can tell you—it’s real. It’s full of heart, soul, sweat, tears, angst, beauty.
And while a lot of people told me they appreciated how vulnerable Nice Churchy Patriarchy is—to me, Maybe We Could Pray Again actually feels like a much more vulnerable book.
I don’t assume that more vulnerable is automatically better. But I do think that vulnerability can be a powerful thing. That sometimes it’s what we need.
And I think the topic of prayer is by nature a vulnerable one. It is an intimate, thing, an intensely personal thing, a deeply felt thing.
I’m not here for intellectual treatments of prayer that try to teach us the One Right Way to think about it. That’s not what prayer is.
It’s not a disembodied set of ideas to think about. It’s flesh, heart, spirit, breath. Everything we are. I think this comes through strongly in Maybe We Could Pray Again. And I feel really good about that.
Thanks for being here for this journey together. I can’t wait to share Maybe We Could Pray Again with you in just a few short months.
In this with you.
Huzzah to vulnerability, prayer, and your new book! I love reading more about your process and how everything is hitting you. Can't wait to read Maybe We Could Pray Again!
It's getting closer! So excited for you!