Book of Dreams
Today I am struggling with a very difficult writing task and so I am procrastinating by writing.
It's a difficult task because it is an enormously humbling experience, in my experience, and the nature of the task requires the opposite of humblification, hence the struggle.
I'm writing my bio for inclusion in a book. A book onto the cover of which will go my name. My real names, all three of them. Spelled correctly.
There are eighteen million reasons why this is not a big deal to anyone other than me. For one, it's a marketing textbook. A Canadian marketing textbook, yet. A second Canadian edition version of the 7th American edition of a marketing textbook. You, Gentle Reader, are almost certainly in no danger of encountering it in your local Chapters store. For another, I am the fifth author.
I had assumed that my name would be at the very bottom of the cover, in eight point font, and wouldn't make it to the spine at all. I'd be just one of the et als.
Seriously. I mean, a few weeks back when the editor sent me a form to fill out (onto which I carefully printed my names, all three of them, all three of which typically get spelled incorrectly by everyone who's not related to me, and even by some who are; dear god please let it be correct on the published copy) and there was a section that asked for my bio, I wrote on it, "I assume this doesn't apply to me."
Then today she sends me an email with the copy for the front-of-the-book pages — you know the ones numbered in lower case Roman numerals, before page 1; on which pages are the bios of the other four authors, even the guy whose name goes above mine for reasons I won't go into but do understand, even though his contribution, in the end, to this book was a single 300-word case at the end of one chapter, whereas I completely rewrote four of the 13 chapters, wrote the chapter titled Marketing on the Internet from scratch, edited and revised all the other chapters to some degree, and am now the sole author working with the copyeditor and production editor on the final proofs of the book — and "reminds" me that I still need to write my bio.
Two hundred words, please.
I wish my mother were alive to see this. She was a writer, too.
It's a difficult task because it is an enormously humbling experience, in my experience, and the nature of the task requires the opposite of humblification, hence the struggle.
I'm writing my bio for inclusion in a book. A book onto the cover of which will go my name. My real names, all three of them. Spelled correctly.
There are eighteen million reasons why this is not a big deal to anyone other than me. For one, it's a marketing textbook. A Canadian marketing textbook, yet. A second Canadian edition version of the 7th American edition of a marketing textbook. You, Gentle Reader, are almost certainly in no danger of encountering it in your local Chapters store. For another, I am the fifth author.
I had assumed that my name would be at the very bottom of the cover, in eight point font, and wouldn't make it to the spine at all. I'd be just one of the et als.
Seriously. I mean, a few weeks back when the editor sent me a form to fill out (onto which I carefully printed my names, all three of them, all three of which typically get spelled incorrectly by everyone who's not related to me, and even by some who are; dear god please let it be correct on the published copy) and there was a section that asked for my bio, I wrote on it, "I assume this doesn't apply to me."
Then today she sends me an email with the copy for the front-of-the-book pages — you know the ones numbered in lower case Roman numerals, before page 1; on which pages are the bios of the other four authors, even the guy whose name goes above mine for reasons I won't go into but do understand, even though his contribution, in the end, to this book was a single 300-word case at the end of one chapter, whereas I completely rewrote four of the 13 chapters, wrote the chapter titled Marketing on the Internet from scratch, edited and revised all the other chapters to some degree, and am now the sole author working with the copyeditor and production editor on the final proofs of the book — and "reminds" me that I still need to write my bio.
Two hundred words, please.
I wish my mother were alive to see this. She was a writer, too.
5 Comments:
I say you end it with, "She enjoys watching ice hockey." Or "She writes a really good blog." Yeah. One of the two. Definitely.
Wow, congratulations! My father (co-)wrote and edited textbooks, so I can appreciate the amount of dog-work that you have done. Quite an achievement. Do you get the traditional six copies to brag with?
I say you end the bio with "She enjoys karaoke and fast cars."
I'm still having trouble writing the real bio, but this was fun. Thanks for the idea!
Postmodern Sass is a pseudonym for a Gen-Xer living in Toronto, who writes stories about her friends (but please don't tell them) and people she meets. She believes that every song is Killing Me Softly, if you know how to sing it.
She was once happily married, mortgaged, and boring, and is now unhappily single, mortgaged, and neurotic. Today, with her constant feline companion, Pinky, at her side, she writes textbooks, PhD theses, and blogs, and tries, with limited success, not to frighten the boys.
Sass likes fast German cars, American literary fiction, her daddy, karaoke, boots, hockey, summer, the colour pink, lemurs, Blondie, single malt Scotch, dancing, men with Zippos, rhinestones, sapphires, Vikings, and other writers.
She's not so keen on beets and bananas, the fact that cities where it never snows and they call it "ice hockey" have NHL teams, monkeys, spiders, American cars with automatic transmission, winter, reggae, Vikings, and other writers who don't use an apostrophe correctly.
LOVE IT!!!
I love'd the bio - you should stick with it! Its' one of the best Iv'e read in a long time. Who knew you liked Vikings' so much? And yet also hated them. Your'e a complex woman.
(Uh, yeah. The apostrophes were a joke... But really - congratulations on the book!)
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