Progress Report
drorzel | June 19, 2009Tom Levenson's series about the writing of his Newton and the Counterfeiter continues with a piece on the getting of blurbs for the cover:
Newton and the Counterfeiter (Amazon, Powells, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound) is by far my best-blurbed book, boasting enthusiastic and generous praise from a very diverse crew of luminaries — (David Bodanis, Junot DÃaz, Timothy Ferris, Brian Greene, Walter Isaacson, Sylvia Nasar, and Neal Stephenson).
This follows, as I wrote last time, a much sparser field of those who promoted my three previous books. How — and why — did I go for this level of long-…
drorzel | May 28, 2009This week, a special Literary Edition:
Those are the first pass typeset proofs for the book, which just arrived in the mail today. Aren't they adorable?
Oh, okay, fine. You're just here for the conventional cute baby pictures:
SteelyKid's rapidly expanding bag of tricks now includes standing up. More or less. She can haul herself up into a standing position more often than not, and can steady herself on solid objects. Kate's ready to catch her if she falls, but not really holding her in this picture.
She doesn't really crawl in the usual way, but she can scoot around surprisingly quickly…
drorzel | April 22, 2009The official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is December 22nd, exactly eight months from today. It's probably a little too early to go into countdown mode, but I thought I would mention a couple of recent developments with the book.
First, the book itself continues its steady progress toward publication. I got the copyedited manuscript last week, and got off remarkably easy. There are only a few substantive changes, and remarkably few grammar and spelling corrections. Credit for the easy copyedit probably ought to go to Kate, for proofreading almost as many drafts as I have…
drorzel | March 13, 2009I have an official release date for the book-in-production: December 22nd. There's no lay-down date, though, so they may turn up in stores before then. Mark it down on your Christmas list now...
There's also an official title and cover:
Emmy's slightly miffed that she's not the dog on the cover, but that's what she gets for refusing to do the quizzical head-tilt when I have the camera.
I am, as you might guess, pretty excited. I've also got a complete schedule for the process from here on out-- the next step is getting the copyedited pages, which should get here in the second week of April.…
drorzel | February 22, 2009Holding TUH not very neatly done up in pink butcher's paper, whcih was all he could find in a last-minute search before leaving to catch his train for London, Mr Earbrass arrives at the offices of his publishers to deliver it. The stairs look oddly menacing, as though he might break a leg on one of them. Suddenly, the whole thing strikes him as very silly, and he thinks he will go and drop his parcel off the Embankment and thus save everyone concerned a good deal of fuss.
-- Edward Gorey, The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel
I have just now sent off the (hopefully) final…
drorzel | February 9, 2009The Book-in-Progress is slowly but surely moving toward being the Book-in-Production. There isn't an officially official date yet, but I've gotten what should be the last round of edits, and been told that it should be out this fall, just in time for holiday gift-buying.
Between the book and my class, I don't have a great deal of spare mental energy for blogging. Here are a few notes from the ongoing book work, though:
I am amused to discover that the official way to enter a cross-reference is to put "Page XXX" in the text. Not the page number, mind, the exact string "Page XXX." I'm told…
drorzel | December 24, 2008I haven't sent it off to my editor yet-- I need to look it over one more time to see if there are horrible mistakes anywhere-- but I'm officially declaring the third draft of the book-in-progress to be complete. It clocks in at 61,518 words, and 240 pages. That's 50% more words than the contract calls for, but it is down 8,000 words and 23 pages from the second draft.
Most of the reduction came from dropping the former Chapter 9, which was an uneasy fit with the rest of the material. It may become a web site extra at some point in the future. The rest of the edits included some substantial re…
drorzel | August 1, 2008The second complete draft was sent off to my editor yesterday, and after a little bit of excitement regarding files that wouldn't open, it was successfully delivered. There were only minor changes since the last update, mostly having to do with the figures and section headers and so on.
I'll put the table of contents below the fold, but meanwhile, here's a silly picture of me talking to the dog about quantum physics:
Bunnies Made of Cheese:
Talking to Your Dog About Quantum Physics
(Second Draft, 7/31/08)
Introduction
Why Talk to Your Dog About Physics?: An Introduction to Quantum Physics…
drorzel | July 21, 2008I've finished a first pass through the second draft of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book, doing revisions on all of the chapters to make it a little more comprehensible. I'm still waiting for beta-reader comments on the re-written Chapter 8 (hint, hint), but other than that, I'm going through doing consistency checks ("Didn't I say the same exact thing in Chapter 3?"), tightening up occasional sentences (I have a tendency to overuse phrases like "because of the fact that," which is four words too long), and identifying a few issues with figures.
The clunky splint on my left hand makes this oh…
drorzel | July 1, 2008It's been ages since I reported on the status of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book. For most of that time, that's because there was nothing to report-- I sent a draft off to my editor, and was awaiting comments.
When I finally did get comments, the August 1 deadline was beginning to loom, particularly since the comments were of the form "Aiiieeeee!!!! Much too difficult!!!!" and called for really significant rewriting. That's been a large part of the reason for the relative lack of posting around here-- my computer time has been devoted to frantically revising draft chapters.
I'm up through…
drorzel | January 13, 2008I'm sitting on the couch, watching tv, when the dog comes in. "Hey, dude, what ever happened with that book, anyway?"
"What book?" I ask, distractedly.
"The one about me. What other book would I be asking about?"
"Oh, yeah. I sent the first draft off to my editor and a bunch of other people, and I'm waiting for their comments."
"Oh. That must suck, huh?"
"What?"
"Waiting. I don't like waiting."
"I've noticed that." She's good for ten seconds or so, but more than that, and she starts creeping forward. "It's not so bad, though. I've already gotten some comments, which have been very positive…
drorzel | December 9, 2007It's been a couple of weeks since the last progress report, and Emmy is getting concerned.
So what's the status of the book, anyway?
Introduction
Current Revision: 1
Total Words: 430 (dialogue only)
Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality
Current Revision: 5a
Total Words: 5,279
Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle
Current Revision: 7
Total Words: 4,499
Chapter 3: The Copenhagen Interpretation
Current Revision: 2
Total Words: 4,801
Chapter 4: The Many-Worlds Interpretation
Current Revision: 3
Total Words: 4,869
Chapter 5: The Quantum Zeno Effect
Current Revision: 2
Total Words: 3,263
Chapter 6:…
drorzel | November 15, 2007It's been a while since I did one of these, so here's your book progress update for the last couple of weeks, with the obligatory dog picture. This is probably the halfway point for the first draft, more or less.
Introduction
Current Revision: 1
Total Words: 430 (dialogue only)
Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality
Current Revision: 5a
Total Words: 5,279
Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle
Current Revision: 7
Total Words: 4,499
Chapter 3: The Copenhagen Interpretation
Current Revision: 2
Total Words: 4,801
Chapter 4: The Many-Worlds Interpretation
Current Revision: 3
Total Words: 4,869
Chapter 5…
drorzel | October 21, 2007The occasional writing update, with bonus LOLEmmy:
(Photo credit: Kate)
Introduction
Current Revision: 1
Total Words: 422 (dialogue only)
Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality
Current Revision: 5a
Total Words: 5,279
Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle
Current Revision: 7
Total Words: 4,499
Chapter 3: The Copenhagen Interpretation
Current Revision: 2
Total Words: 4,801
Chapter 4: The Many-Worlds Interpretation
Current Revision: 3
Total Words: 4869
Chapter 4 has been far and away the most difficult bit to write, which is why the dog is so exhausted. This is what I get for setting myself the goal…
drorzel | October 7, 2007
"Books? I like books!"
Here's the next occasional book progress update:
Introduction
Current Revision: 1
Total Words: 422 (dialogue only)
Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality
Current Revision: 5a
Total Words: 5,279
Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle
Current Revision: 7
Total Words: 4,499
Chapter 3: The Copenhagen Interpretation
Current Revision: 2
Total Words: 4,801
The Introduction dialogue isn't exactly new-- I wrote it a while back-- but it was part of the stuff that I sent to my agent to get feedback on, so I'll throw it in here.
Chapter 2 has been rather comprehensively revised, and the…
drorzel | September 24, 2007It turns out that there's actually a small clause in the standard publishing contract that requires any author with a blog to post periodic updates on the progress of the current writing project. Who knew?
Well, OK, there's no contractual obligation, but really, I have the blog, and I need to fill it with something, so why not the occasional progress report? I'm not going to commit to any particular schedule, but from time to time, I'll post updates on how things are going-- word counts, general impressions, out-of-context dialogue snippets.
So, how is it going?
The target here is around 40,…