Ficlets

He’s not my favorite writer, but he makes some good observations about the writing life:

...when the book is done, which it will be, and it’s in the bookstore, people ask, “How does it feel?” You say, “Great!” but that’s not true. You feel relief, and disbelief, and a sort of sorrow that it’s gone and what will you do with your life now? Also there is that long passage in the sixth chapter that you meant to rewrite and did not and now you know you should have. And there is that typo. The publisher sent you a copy of the book hot off the press and you opened it at random and there it is, the word “releif”—God showing you that no matter how hard you try, you still fall short. Humility comes with the territory.

True enough, although I have to admit I sometimes can get irritated when people point out the occasional typesetting error and make harrumphing sounds about how they expect a more professional presentation. My thought here is, dude, there are 100,000 words in the book, and you’re kvetching to me about six errors? Some time ago they did a new version of Ulysses which caught, on average, an error per page. No one bitches about James Joyce (at least, not about his typos). Stupid James Joyce.

Which is not to say I don’t like knowing about the typos – that’s how we get them out of there in the next printing. I just hope you won’t be snide about them. We don’t put them in there on purpose.