Even this late…you get kind of paranoid about shipping a book off…

…and yes, Protector has flown to NYC….

In the real old days, you took your carbon copy and put it in a safe place, found a stout box for your 20 lb bond typescript, [heavier from that with the weight of 3 bottles of dried correction fluid] and went to the post office, applying a green Notify Me card for a fee, and as much insurance as you could, because it would take you 3 months to retype it—as well as the postage, and return addresses of all sorts, plus, inside the box, the return label and postage should it be shipped back for correction or (gasp!) rejected though under contract.

You then sweated it for a week until the green card came to tell you it had actually been received.

In the medium old days, you took your 20 lb bond typescript to the copy office, refusing to leave it to be copied, and just letting people needing just a few copies ‘play through’ while you tried to remember where you were and sweated whether you’d pulled page 158 from the glass before surrendering the machine to the gal with the party invitations to run. You usually got about 20 interruptions before you reached page 425 and finished the copy…unless you had to call the technician to relieve a paper jam or load more ink. Then you collated it, neatened it up, put it in a box, and kept your original. You paid 10 cents a page for those copies, so you forked over 42.50 for the copy, and went to the post office where you got the green card and the insurance, and likewise mailed it off…to your agent, who would laboriously copy it and deliver it to the publisher, and other interested parties, like a UK publisher. And you got another copy charge from the agent.

Then there was Fedex. But they weren’t immune. One book package got ripped open and random pages strewn all over NYC. By then we had our own copier, and ran duplicate copies, so one copy went to the agent and one to the publisher.

Now—I attach a file to letters to my agent and my publisher…who will later ask for transmission of yet another  electronic file, because they will probably lose that one or not be able to convert it to Word. Dunno why I can and they can’t, but I will, when they ask.

Times change, but you still feel terribly at loose ends when you’ve shipped one off.

In the old days, you got a new box of carbon paper and a frighteningly blank box (not packet, box) of 20 lb bond. And inserted 2 sheets with carbon, and started typing.

Now—the white space is infinite, so you write something down to anchor the project in space and time and try to get going.

I’d sorta like to go out to eat to celebrate, but we’re trying to cut back on food. Sigh.