Collaboration

M.H. and I sat side by side in my office all weekend on putting the finishing touches on his book.

We've been asked if it's maritally challenging to work together as writer and editor, and the answer is an unconditional yes. But much more so in the earlier stages, when I'm saying things like, "I don't think this section works at all" and he's saying, "But that's the most precious, interesting, vital part of the entire book," and I'm saying, "Yeah, but it still needs to be completely changed." (When the conversation starts off like that, someone's definitely going to end up sleeping on the couch.) But this round of editing was about the fifteenth time through that puppy, and so I was saying things like, "Darling, I think this sentence needs a comma," and he was saying, "A comma would be divine, my dear."

So the point is it was a fairly nice weekend together, and then it was D.O.N.E. (see related post). Now we're just waiting for the company he hired to design the inside pages and get it set up for all the different ebook formats. I suppose there's some checking and tweaking that goes on at that point, but I'm really expecting it to be for sale sometime next week.

This is pretty big for us. We quit our jobs and moved to Montana nearly six years ago in anticipation of this very event.

Every January, M.H. figures out our family's budget for the year, and then I make a game of sorts out of trying to earn 100% of that magic number that we need to survive as quickly as possible. (I think I hit it in August one year, which was sweet.) But we were talking last night about whether any income from Rhubarb should count toward the official 100%. I had to think about it for a second, but of course the answer is yes. This was a team effort from the beginning, and not just the wacky pie-themed sci-fi book, either.