The Edited Version

The full edited version of my manuscript arrived yesterday, and it was terribly exciting. The editors had lots of nice things to say about the book in a cover letter, but that was obviously meant to soften the blow before I turned to the actual manuscript, which was a storm of pencil marks, queries and suggested improvements.
I now have two weeks to read carefully through it, answer the queries, agree to or reject the changes, and write a couple of explanatory passages. It's quite daunting, simply because I don't really know what to do - the editor's shorthand is quite a mystery to me, and at this stage I worry that adding sentences to explain something that is unclear in the text will look clunky. But of course I'll do it. Right from the beginning of this process I decided I'd be the model author who would respond to all requests positively. I have been warned by other authors that this is always the most difficult part of the whole creative process.

The Next Book?

I had to change some of the chapter names again - apparently as soon as this was done the whole thing goes into editing. Quite exciting, and I suppose a landmark moment.
Now I have to think about my next book. Knowing publishers (who like their authors to keep writing the same thing), I will need to do another travel book, and I do have an idea planned. I have actually run the idea by my publisher, and she loves it. The problem is, until my first book is released and proves a financial success (which I am confident about), I seriously doubt the publishing house will give me another advance to do the relatively expensive - and extensive - travel that the new book will require.
But I want to keep writing, and working on a serious project, just to keep the momentum up and keep me in that psychic space of "being a writer."
So for now I am working on a project that I call Spiritual Journeying. It has elements of the travel genre in it, but all the travel is being done in my own city, or even closer to home - my own head. Basically it is a manifesto for the spiritual dilettante, an account of my own, unashamedly syncretic, spiritual journey. I have already written a substantial part of the first chapter, which is on the organised Interfaith movement, but so far have been to shy to show it to my publisher. Mostly because I feel certain that she will reject it and tell me to wait for the next travel piece. But I am still working on it, because I am passionate about it, it excites and interests me, and it seems the perfect thing to be writing about.
Is it the Next Book? I don't know. But it's my new lifeboat, the thing I can point to when people ask me what I am working on right now.

The Third Version

OK, I got the manuscript back today for the third revision. This one is much more nuanced - my publisher has been through it and made quite detailed notes, and though she cheerily said on the phone that there were just one or two simple changes to make before the whole thing is finally submitted for editing, it actually looks like an enormous amount of work. Oh well, all for the best, I suppose. It means that I will have to sacrifice my Friday night activities, though - this is going to take me all weekend, and I know they want it back asap.
In the last draft I was told to delete two chapters which didn't work on their own, and try to incorporate those stories elsewhere in the text. Well, I figured that if the chapters didn't work on their own (one was on Catholicism in Vietnam, the other was stories of my grandparents visiting me there) then the particular anecdotes must have sucked, so I just deleted them and forgot about them. A note on this new version of the manuscript asks, "can we have the grandparent stories back please?" So I have to try to find a place for them elsewhere in the book. Very risky work. But Maggie (my publisher) obviously DID hate the Catholic stories, because they remain un-resurrected.
I had a kind of fantasy that my book would be perfect on the first submission, and that my publisher would call me and say, "Genius - we're going straight to press as-is." Obviously, that must be the kind of fantasy that every first-time author has.
Admittedly it is a dull process, but there are worse things I could be doing. And I am confident that my publisher has my commercial interests at heart, and wants to release the best possible book she can. So I will continue to tweak and twist and re-arrange until I have produced a work of genius.