The rough draft is finished

Update #4: At 78,500 words, 'Writer' is off to my editor for its first critical test

Note: Since December, I’ve been publishing short updates on progress I’m making on a book about writing that I hope to publish in September. The idea is to show you that books don’t just pop out of nowhere. They are two-steps-forward-one-step backward journeys filled with adventure and aggravation.

TODAY AT 2:29 p.m., at Perugino in downtown Eugene, I celebrated the high-water mark since I began working on Writer six months ago: I passed the rough draft on to my editor, Jeff Wright. Nothing could steal my joy, not even the embarrassment of having first showed up at the wrong coffee shop, Vero Espresso, on 14^th.

That’s why writers need editors. Because writers sometimes get things wrong.

I chose Jeff because for years he edited my column at The Register-Guard and is among the finest editors I’ve had. He knows me as a person, as a writer and as a (former) runner, the two of us having been on the same Hood to Coast Relay team back in 1997. He’s caught more of my errors than anyone but She Who Sees Them Every Day.

Left to right, Jeff Wright, R-G reporter Paul Neville and me after 1997 Hood to Coast Relay in Seaside. We were way younger then.

In other book news, I got an out-of-the-blue assist from Katherine Gries, a former student of mine when I was an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. Last month, Gries and I were meeting at the Washburne Cafe in Springfield about a writing project she’s working on when I mentioned Writer. She was intrigued. I asked if she wanted to take a look. She did.

Her edit — and advice she gave me in two follow-up talks — upgraded my manuscript considerably. Among other things, she: (a) said she got bogged down in “too many examples” from other writers; (b) questioned if readers, particularly women, were going to be OK with me referring to Garrison Keillor so much in the wake of Minnesota Public Radio cutting ties with him in 2017 after an MPR investigation showed he was involved in dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents over the years; and (c) suggested I challenge readers at the end of each chapter with some “take-action” questions and short assignments.

I began writing the book in late January and, after hunkering down in Yachats four times, wrote 89,000 words. Then, taking the advice of novelist Stephen King — second draft equals first draft, minus 10 percent — I whittled it to 78,500 before handing it off to Jeff.