book report

So I’m trying to finish editing this book thing I wrote. It’s fun, and also frustrating. It’s fun because I love to write. It’s frustrating because I already know it’s not the ultimate (or even penultimate) book I would like to write. It’s just the first one I’ve managed to finish.

Talking about making music or books or whatever I figure must not be very interesting for other people to read about, but I have a need to get my thoughts out about it. So here goes.

I’m caught between thinking that I need to just get the book out there (I’ve planned to self-publish) and wanting to not skimp making it (such as it is) the best it can be. The problem is, of course, that you can edit, tweak, and make improvements forever.

The current editing space I’m in is incomplete; I need to finish this round of edits. But what about after that? Set it aside for another month then go at it again? How do I decide when to stop?

When I played music, the finishing of an album had the same dynamic, except that (this was back in the old days of making music) I was paying for studio time, and I had to take time off work to go to a studio. I had limited funds, so there was a need to finish recording within a certain time frame. Maybe I would have liked to keep tweaking and improving my records, but I simply did not have that luxury. Beyond that, I wanted to get the records out so I could book live shows based on them; playing live shows was as much a part of making music as making a recording. (In fact playing live is what I miss the most. I really do need to find a silly open mic somewhere so I can sing at people.)

But now here I am with a word processing file on my computer. There’s no time limit imposed by finances or my work schedule. Just the time limit of looming DEATH (not to be morbid, but at some point we all die, and at that point, all the things we had meant to do with our lives can no longer be realized. Then it truly is too late.) People who are famous and have money behind them might go on book tours, but I won’t be doing that with this book. (I also have a hunch I would hate doing a book tour; it’s promotion, not part of the art. I always sucked at promotion.) So there’s no “live show” component driving me to finish this book either.

So that’s it, I guess. Goddamn I used a lot of semicolons in this post.