Turning In the Last Page Proof Is Almost as Good as Sex

I'm giddy! I'm thrilled! I'm so frickin' relieved!

Our book Building for Boomers is AT THE PRINTER! I just sent the last page proof to Smita, our project manager at Glyph International in India. I had my doubts about working with the folks in a foreign country with our time zones upside down from each other, but it's been fine. Fun, in fact, much to my surprise. I've been working with them largely on their time, the time of their workday, which means I've been up until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. so we could ask and answer questions and communicate pretty close to real time. Consequently, Smita and I have developed a wonderful rapport that we probably wouldn't have otherwise.

What a process this has been. So far. It's not over yet. We've gone the mile, all but the last couple of inches, but those last couple of inches make it real.

For those of you who think you want to write a book, let me tell you that it's much more involved, tedious, time-consuming and, in fact, all-consuming than I ever thought it would be. Not just the writing -- that's really the fun part. The reviewing and editing of the text in Word was a little overwhelming. At that point it's still largely in code (production codes) so you can't see what it will really look like. The pictures aren't there; it's just amorphous text. We could add and change at will, and we did! We were grateful for the chance to do that.

Then come the page proofs, the way it will actually look when it's printed. We could only make changes that did not affect the indexing, so we could add a few words here and there and correct the mistakes and typos, which we kept finding endless numbers of, but couldn't significantly change much. We did find a couple of chunks of copy that had been repeated earlier, so when we deleted them, we had to fill in the space with something about the same length to not throw off the indexing. Challenging but doable.

I rewrote the acknowledgements about 10 times. That was the last piece I just sent in a few minutes ago. I kept thinking of people I wanted to include. My co-author Mike (Kephart) had a very long acknowledgement section, so my adding didn't make it lopsided. Being able to thank people is a great joy. And, we hope they buy the book! (snicker)

Both Mike and I reviewed nearly every word of the text in Word and then in page proofs, so we hope we caught nearly all of the mistakes, typos and repeats.

Now we wait for the index. That should be fun. I rely on indexes (indices, to be technically correct) in business books so I hope this one is good. They did an impressive job on the Table of Contents (TOC). We weren't all that consistent in our structure (ROFL! Understatement!) but the TOC makes it look like we were.

I ordered one of my own books on Amazon.com and paid the same as everybody else. I want to see what everybody's getting. I only get a handful of books for free from the publisher, McGraw-Hill, so nobody better be expecting me to give 'em one. Sorry!

Okay, now I'm calmer and my afterglow is giving way to fatigue. But I've earned it. The last page proof is in and I've gotten the okay message from Smita. Yep, it's almost as good as sex. Almost.

Temper Temper!!

I am going to have a temper tantrum...right here, right now. The difference between the one I'm going to have here and the ones I used to have when I was two years old (okay, and 10 and 13 and 31 and 42) is that I'm just going to vent in writing instead of throwing something that wouldn't break but would definitely make noise and possibly scar whatever it hit.

Don't you ever just get fed up with everything, including things that either don't bother you significantly any other time or things that you just put up with and accept as part of that huge segment of life called, "I can't control that"? Well, that's the way I am tonight.

First of all, speed bumps are the soourge of the earth, so incredibly annoying! All of that frickin' bumping can't be good for the car or the tires and they certainly aggravate the people inside the car.

Okay, that's out of my system.

This temper tantrum precipiting event was a late-night trip to the grocery store to buy hair color for my "natural" red hair. I mix two colors and I was out of one. So I went to a Fry's in the neighborhood, about two miles away from my mom's house in Phoenix where I am for a few weeks. It was about 10:20 p.m. Yes, they were open but help was sparse. No big deal...until I went to check out and not even one checkout lane was open. I asked someone who was stocking something or other at one checkout if any lanes were open and she said no, that the only person there had gone on break and may or may not be back.

Great!

So I disgustedly pushed my cart over to the self-checkout. I'd never gone that route before, or at least not for more than a handful of items, and, of course, I ended up with a relatively full cart.

The ambient noise was so high that I couldn't hear what the mechanical female voice was cooing to me in the way of instructions. Some of the items would scan, others wouldn't. It took me 10 times as long to check myself out as it would have a store employee, even a neophyte employee, and I was getting more and more frustrated! The voice, which by this time was getting quite annoying, kept saying that someone had been alerted and would be over to help me. I looked around -- nobody!

Finally, a young (20s) guy with a slump and an introverted nature came into the area and I called him over. He acted like I was stupid for not knowing that you had to move your items about 3 feet away from the scanner and the shelf to the right of it or it would block the scan. Well, pardon me, but there are no instructions there, and I've not used it before, and I never wanted to scan my own items in the first place!

I got more irritated with his attitude than I had been with the moody machine!

Finally I finished and paid and then I had to bag my own groceries! Their plastic bags -- no choice of plastic or paper -- peeled off of their hanging perches just fine but just try to get one of them open to put anything into it! They are welded shut, I swear! Eventually, I got each of them open and by then was quite open about my disgust and frustration with the whole experience, rather roughly tossing anything that wasn't breakable into the cart once I got the damn things into bags.

The topper, as far as I was concerned, was when I got no receipt when I'd pushed "receipt, yes." I called the slouching, introverted kid over and asked with rather clenched teeth if there was a way to actually get a receipt. Being a bright boy, he sensed that I was about to become an ex-Fry's customer. That and the fact that I said I was tempted never to return and to start going to Safeway. He offered to get a manager to talk to me. Yes, I said, please do.

A nice lady came over to me, a bit warily, I noticed. I told her testily of my experience and exclaimed, "I never WANTED to scan my own groceries and bag them!" She said I could have asked for someone and they would have come. Gee, the point, lady, was that no one was THERE!

Finally I said to her, "This has been such a frustrating experience. What can you do for me to get me to come back, which I'm not really interested in doing after this?" She looked at me like, say whaaaa? She asked, "Like what?" "I don't know, just something, anything," I said.

She went over to the young kid and talked to him and 5 minutes later (yes, it took 5 minutes!) he handed me a Fry's gift card for...all of $5. Geez. Well, it was better than nothing and I said to her, "Thank you. I wanted the acknowledgement more than anything."

I was mollified, realizing that this wasn't a big deal in the scheme of things. I was just tired and cranky and put out that my little trip to the store didn't go quickly and smoothly. I got out to the car, put my stuff in the trunk, and as I slowly and sanely (really!) drove out of the parking lot, I realized that the one thing I hadn't picked up was hair color!

Well, no way was I going back into the store after creating such a scene, and the drug stores were closed, so I drove another 3 miles to Safeway.

On my way there, I remembered a time in my late 20s when I was equally frustrated and upset over who-remembers-what. Only this time I was drunk and it was raining. I drove from the city (Denver, it was, then) to my place in Lakewood and had to exit 6th Avenue onto Wadsworth around a sharp cloverleaf. I just basically said, "F*ck it" and drove around that curvy exit without braking much at all. It's amazing I didn't kill myself. That's one of the reasons I don't drink these days -- flawed thinking when I do.

On to Safeway for my hair color. The people in front of me in line had a big cart full of stuff, saw that I had just one item and generously said, "You go ahead." The nice guy at the checkout was cheery and exhibited a sense of humor, which I matched, and it was a delightful experience. They would probably not believe that I had been so bitchy just a few minutes before.

Okay, I feel better now that I've vented. Thank you, all two of you who have read this whole rant.

Page Proofs!

Tonight I got my first look at the page proofs for our book Building for Boomers. That first moment when I opened the file of the first chapter and saw what it will look like when it's printed was stunning. It's been such a theoretical experience for so long and now it's inches away from becoming real. It started out as a blank page and it's turning into a book!

Three of my personal friends have already ordered the book from Amazon.com. Two of them have absolutely nothing to do with design or construction so it's purely a gesture of support and friendship, period. How great is that?!

Tomorrow morning I'll start reviewing the page proofs for the first two chapters. They're due back to our project manager tomorrow night, which is the morning of the next day in India, where it's being produced. The instructions as to how to edit or comment on a .pdf are a bit overwhelming, but then so were the instructions for creating the manuscript with the exact font, size and style, and I got comfortable with that after a chapter or two. This is much simpler than that.

My mom said she wanted to buy the first copy. She passed away in October so she won't be doing that, but I think I'll order one in her honor now that we're almost there. She would like that.