Nine years.
Ten chapters.
126 pages.
882 paragraphs.
63,650 words.
301,546 characters.
[photo right: the full manuscript, single-sided, double-spaced. The page count above is single-spaced on 5.5×8.5 paper]
It’s done. It’s written. I started nine years ago, in July of 1997, to write a book about my experiences in the West Bank in 1997. The basis of the book were my blog entries from February, March, April and May of 1997.
I put the book aside within one year, barely two-thirds written. I only picked it up again in 2004, the summer after business school when I was looking for a job.
Now it’s done.
Oh, I have a few weeks of editing and tweaking, and some of the sections are weak. But it’s done. There’s no more to write.
After talking with Nel today, I was reminded to check out your blog. Although I had connected Jim to it about a month ago, I hadn’t really spent much time with it myself.
Its lovely for a mom to see her offspring so well presented. The tech log was much appreciated, the dates, the trajectory, the explanations all well filled out. In coversation there is so much I miss getting, about your job that there are days I conclude that you have little internal drive to be a teacher or be understood. This blog wipes that thought away.
The baseball cards, immigrant rallies, the intro to your book, all items of deja vu from phone conversations. How delightful to have one’s short oral memory enhanced and refreshed. Thanks to LilyParrot. If only she knew to be proud. I once had a short pick-up conversation during which I probably complained about University of Dayton, end with his advice. If I disliked U of D so much, why didn’t I just transfer out? I did, to Northwestern. Great advice! How is it that strangers can see what we need and say it to our face in a way that makes us stop procrastinating. Its that tiny shame of admitting that we live with inadequacies that we really could fix. What will I confess next to a stranger that I really should fix? Probably clean my closets.