Turns out I added so much stuff (50 or so inserts totaling nearly 5,000 words) in the first pass review process a while back that the next iteration of the manuscript (fully justified in terms of text layout) has been delayed. Supposed to be on Neil Nyren's desk two days ago, meaning I would have spent this weekend pouring over it, but will arrive there a week late, meaning I will spend the Halloween weekend thus holed-up.
Upside? That next version, the last I get to see and alter prior to final publication, will contain virtually all of the changes submitted to date (numbered somewhere north of 500 and south of 1k), with the possible exception of a last batch from Lexington Green. Sensing we had crossed the Rubicon, after which any more changes would be done on trust (meaning I wouldn't see the correction until I got advance copies of the final hard-copy--always scary), I pursued Green's latest suggestions in the manner befitting a justified typeset: you isolate the targeted text and then alter it while keeping the length almost exactly the same in terms of combined characters/spaces. That can be pretty challenging, but it makes it far more likely that your change will go in as desired versus being adapted by the proofreaders at Putnam with a view to achieving the same ends (i.e., no triggered ripple effect in the text that throws off pagination).
The sked was thrown off-kilter--no surprise--by the volume of changes and additions offered in the first-pass review. I am an inveterate rule-breaker in that regard--the director who would screw around with the film cut right up to the world premier, if you let him.
Downside to that? While the advance uncorrected proof warns of possible changes, most reviews will be written off that version, with the reviewers not bothering to re-read the final version, possibly resulting in judgments rendered on points subsequently corrected.
Still, I prefer to work the manuscript like crazy right up to the point where Putnam goes near crazy, because you live with the final product for the rest of your life.
Early feedback from a variety of readers--all unprompted--tells me I hit the right tone with this book, and that I was smart to "branch out" from the perceived military strategy ghetto of the first two books (true with PNM, far less so with BFA). I say "branch out" because that wider lens has always been my norm, which is why I eschew the title of "military strategist." I am nothing of the sort. I work the intersections between security and everything else, which is why I claim the title of grand strategist to fully describe the nature and aspirations of my growing canon of books.
In that sense, Great Powers places me more clearly in my natural element.
And that feels good.
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Comments (3)
Tom,
Thanks for the play-by-play and progress updates, from the beginning of Great Powers to now. It's been facinating to follow your progress.
Posted by Thaddeus Jankowski | October 24, 2008 4:19 PM
Have you thought of collaborating on a high school history text?
After that little bomb some reasons. I'm working my way through, "Lies My Teacher Told Me," by James Loewen and expect to finish it as soon as I find where I put it. IMHO both the left and the right misread history, sometimes intentionally for partisan purposes. They gain traction due to the weak grounding in our history most Americans gained high school. We aren't total saints as some texts seem to imply. And we aren't total sinners as some critics seem to imply, especially in colleges and universities, where our teachers are trained. At least some of that is just over zealous pushback to the whitewashed (pun not entirely intended) version of history their students come to college with.
The history text idea arrived while listening to the Evolutionary Enlightenment interview. The Loewen book has a wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me
The book discusses the difficulty of writing and getting a high school history text published and accepted such that almost none are written by first rate historians or writers and are usually dry and boring as well as incomplete and surprisingly inaccurate.
Granted this would be a grueling and thankless job but somebody should do it.
Or string together up to a couple hundred 10 minute You Tube blurbs with some ppt slides over the next few years and get an educator to tie them together in a syllabus. Teachers could assign them and the kids might enjoy them more than a dry book.
Excuse the brainstorming but who knows something might float to the top.
Posted by Gerry | October 24, 2008 6:33 PM
Interesting idea.
I'm writing a piece called "How to Become a Grand Strategist" that's sort of a textbook/how-to in miniature, spiced up with some history.
I had a blast writing the history chapter of Great Powers. My brother, the historian-librarian, asked me to consider writing the sort of alternative U.S. history that you're hinting at.
I do consider it downstream.
Posted by Tom Barnett | October 24, 2008 10:58 PM