I've been working on Red Phone Box in its post-writing stages since March. How on earth can it have taken so long, you may ask? My dad asked me the same question.
"I would've thought you'd be on to the next thing," he told me when I said I was still working on it.
Writing a book is a hard job. Writing a book with 27 other people is easier in some ways, and harder in others. Yes, you have other people to do some of the writing. But then you have 28 brains whose madness has to be reconciled.
So have we just been sitting around eating bonbons for months. Bonbons? We don't have time for any freaking BONBONS. (Don't touch those, I'm saving them for later. )
If you've never been through this book stuff with a publisher, it's fun to see what goes on.
Red Phone Box started as a concept. I wanted to do something like a huge game of Exquisite Corpse except that each person would write a whole story-chapter instead of just two lines. Apparently everyone thought I was crazy, but they decided to play along anyway. Leaving aside the process of putting all the stories together, there was also a lot of rereading. When a book gets too long for you to look at it easily in a glance, there are multiple rereadings, revisions, and proofreadings. This book was proofed in the digital by me and about six other people. Then it was proofed on paper by Tim Dedopulos and on a Kindle Paperwhite by me. We were making changes to it, fixing typos or places we decided needed a bit more editing right until we turned it in to Kirkus and sent the galleys to the printer.
There was also the layout in four different formats (so far--the hardcover layout still remains to be finished). And then after the layout, we looked it over again. At that point, any change had to be made on four different editions.
Already hundreds of hours of work had gone into the book before we got to this stage. It started to seem like we'd never see the light of day. Eternal darkness and woe covered bookland. Until today, when we received the loose proof pages from the printer.
"I would've thought you'd be on to the next thing," he told me when I said I was still working on it.
Writing a book is a hard job. Writing a book with 27 other people is easier in some ways, and harder in others. Yes, you have other people to do some of the writing. But then you have 28 brains whose madness has to be reconciled.
So have we just been sitting around eating bonbons for months. Bonbons? We don't have time for any freaking BONBONS. (Don't touch those, I'm saving them for later. )
If you've never been through this book stuff with a publisher, it's fun to see what goes on.
Red Phone Box started as a concept. I wanted to do something like a huge game of Exquisite Corpse except that each person would write a whole story-chapter instead of just two lines. Apparently everyone thought I was crazy, but they decided to play along anyway. Leaving aside the process of putting all the stories together, there was also a lot of rereading. When a book gets too long for you to look at it easily in a glance, there are multiple rereadings, revisions, and proofreadings. This book was proofed in the digital by me and about six other people. Then it was proofed on paper by Tim Dedopulos and on a Kindle Paperwhite by me. We were making changes to it, fixing typos or places we decided needed a bit more editing right until we turned it in to Kirkus and sent the galleys to the printer.
There was also the layout in four different formats (so far--the hardcover layout still remains to be finished). And then after the layout, we looked it over again. At that point, any change had to be made on four different editions.
Already hundreds of hours of work had gone into the book before we got to this stage. It started to seem like we'd never see the light of day. Eternal darkness and woe covered bookland. Until today, when we received the loose proof pages from the printer.
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