I finished writing out my initial draft before I went out of town on 11/19. And then I kind of took the week of Thanksgiving off. Perhaps not the best choice, but I don’t regret having a relaxing holiday. I did get around to doing part of my work on Sunday. That’s when I finally read Ambrose’s and Bill’s accounts of the trip. Both of them finished their write-ups well before I did, but I refused to read them until I had finished my draft. I didn’t want my brain to be thinking of the words and memories of others while I was writing my own story.
There was very little in their accounts that I hadn’t covered from my own perspective, which was pretty neat. I do reference the many photos I took while writing to help me remember, but I can’t take a photo of everything.
I’m still working on the next step in the process, which is new this year. Usually, I have a hard time rereading my work, so I might skim it or just spellcheck it before handing it off. But I wanted to give it a read through first this time so that I could cull out typos and add any depth from my reading of the guys’ accounts. But I find that I’m actually enjoying the reread and typo/sense check that I’m doing now. Once I finish that, I’ll be handing it off to Ambrose for the first read.
While he works on that, I’ll start selecting the photos that will be used in the book. I have an idea of some of them, since they figure prominently in the writing, but culling photos is always tricky. I want to include all the coolest photos, but sometimes the ones I most want are blurred or otherwise unusable. That is, after all, why I take so darn many.
Ambrose took less than 100 photos. I took nearly 1000. Bill was closer to Ambrose’s number than mine.
In prior years when I’ve done multiple books, I’ve tried to do the production part (pictures, caption, formatting, publishing) at the same time. This year I’m going to try it differently. I’ve barely started writing the second book, which will be on the small ICT section I did in August. I might work on the writing while I’m waiting on Ambrose and doing production tasks, but I might wait later than that. That book will likely be published in 2022, but I have hopes that I can managed a 2021 date for the Frank Church Finale book.
But if I want that, then I’m going to need to put my nose to the grindstone and get it done!