Words on paper

I've been reading my book manuscript on my commute. It's a very cool experience, the tactile feel of the paper and my words telling a special kind of story.

It's amazing how a mere figment of the imagination can become a tangible reality in a matter of a few months. Sometimes I read a section and marvel that I wrote it at all. I haven't had that feeling since my days in daily journalism. In that world, you often write something on deadline and then let it go until you wake up in the morning and see it in print along with the other 75,000 people in the circulation area. Whoa.

That kind of experience breeds a certain confidence that if the work isn't top notch on a given day, it might very well be fabulous the following day. It's a great cure for perfectionism.

So I keep turning the pages of the manuscript, thinking of new directions to take the story, finding things that need to be reworked or expanded. I couldn't have imagined how accomplished I'd feel at this stage of the process.

Onward ...