Finished. Jaysis.

As of this morning, all 462 pages of copyedits have been gone through with the finest comb twice, small additions or changes made, and all of Molly’s fantastic illustrations (including this cubby little internal clitoris — the easiest to label — which fills me with a very odd sort of glee that only a total sexuality geek would entertain, or perhaps just someone who misses having any time to pay attention to her own chubby little internal clitoris) are labeled for the designers.

I have to give myself a pat on the back for this one. I fully expected to go utterly insane during the mere week I had to do all of this in, because I anticipated that my perfectionism, per usual, would get the better of me and everyone else, and I’d be frantically trying to add fifty million things I forgot, or fix hundreds of things that felt right with the first few writings and editings, but which I decided last minute were utterly idiotic.

But that isn’t what happened. Who knows, maybe I’m just too damn tired at this point to care. But since that usually doesn’t make me any less a control freak, perfectionist git, I doubt that’s it. I’m sure some of it is just that my editor and copyeditor rocked it like nobody’s business, and some of it may well be that in my idiot-savantness I somehow managed to write a book that really did cover all the bases that needed covering and could sensibly be covered. Of course, one’d hope that years of writing, editing and working in the field throughout would result in a decent product if the author weren’t a total idiot, which on my better days, I like to think I’m not.

But all the same, it feels good not to have panicked and driven everyone insane (including myself), and to have kept my reputation intact as an author who is easy as hell to edit and work with.

That isn’t to say I don’t still have some lingering worries. I do.

I worry that for the least literate readers, a lot of them just won’t be able to actually read the book: I’ve always made a point of not dumbing things down for young adults, but you do have to recognize that whether we’re talking about 16-year-olds or 36-year-olds, a lot of the world’s literacy levels are not where they should be.

I worry that for all my inclusiveness — which I do recognize is far above that of pretty much any other sex book you’d pick up, for any age — I still managed to leave some poor kid out who’ll pick this book up for comfort and walk away feeling like a freak. I equally worry that a lot of them just aren’t ready for inclusiveness, period: the level of bias and ignorance about others we see at Scarleteen often enough is always fresh in my mind, and always an issue to be tackled.

I worry that the places where I challenged the readers to stretch their minds and ideas and understandings of things — like asking them to look at the cultural negatives of the concept of virginity, like asking them to take stock of hidden biases, like asking them to question how much of what’s put forth as “romance” is actually abusive behaviour, like asking them to really examine certain aspects of sex and culture they might have bought into without question, like asking them to recognize that issues of gender identity and orientation are about everyone, not just those on the margins — may have been asking too much of some of them. I worry that some of those challenges may put them off the book, and thus, they won’t get the basic information they need. I worry that for all my efforts to make this book radically different than anything else out there I may have made it too different.

Of course, I have the typical fear-of-failure worries that the years (and tears: lodisa, what a rollercoaster process this has been, to the degree that this may all result in me having NO sadness whatsoever about a long-term project being 100% finished, which would be a first, I’m a shitty finisher in general — I prefer circular patterns to bonafide endings) invested in this book will be for naught, that it’ll be a flop, that it’ll just make my own life more difficult in terms of meeting even more conflict from the world-at-large than I already do with the work I do, or make me more broke than I already am, or something terrible will go wrong between here and the galleys or the galleys and print, blah blah blah. You know the drill: the typical ego-driven stuff.

But so far, those worries and others like them, while certainly present, aren’t pervasive, aren’t causing me to lose any sleep at night, and aren’t really harshing my buzz here.

Yet, anyway. Who knows where I’ll be at when the galleys get here, or the next draft for the cover comes in, or the first craptastic review of it lands on my desk. I make no promises.

Right now, though, I’m ready for a nice long bath, another cup of hot coffee, an afternoon with a good friend, and a show at the Tractor tonight with my sweetie.

I’m also still flying on the buzz of some completely spectacular sex last night (followed by couch-snuggle with some MST3K, just to add a cherry on top), which helps, and I — and my cute internal clitoris — wouldn’t say no to more of later on, either.

filed under Heather Corinna
posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 10:52 am

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