it is finished — and now it begins …

49,530 words.

The bulk of it is handwritten on 191 notebook pages, the remainder typed up from journal entries and my own newsletters.

Finally, after five months, it is out — in random pieces scattered across three notebooks and multiple computer files, little bits and snapshots and video transcripts and newspaper excerpts. They’re all out. It is drafted.

And now it begins: assesssing what I’ve done. Picking a single narrative path among the pieces. Typing, revising, stitching together with transitions, segues. Filling in holes. Working and reworking and reworking the language. Scanning photos, writing captions.

From what I can tell, 70% of the project is still ahead. Maybe more.

But the drafting, the long, arduous yanking of sentence after sentence out of my skull, is finished. From this point forward it’s all revision — and I love revising even more than I love ice cream.

By August 2007 I hope to have completed my first book.

After college I had the privilege of teaching for a year in Beijing, which is a quaint way of saying I spent twelve months as a clueless klutz, stumbling from one awkward cross-cultural miscommunication to another.

In 2008 many thousands of people will join in that experience as they travel to Beijing for the summer Olympics. Perhaps my small book will serve as a humorous foretaste.

Will it be published? Yes, by me. It’d be neat if I found a publisher to pick it up, but that’s not really my concern. Publishing is an illusion, after all; writing is its own reward.

Incidentally, in case you’re curious, back in September I offered a sneak preview here.