Authors: on finishing a long-term project

Well, I did it

I really did write my first book. Backroads & Byways of Arizona really is going to be published.

You've heard this before here, but now it truly and officially is complete on my end. I just sent the final proof copy (with a few minor edits) back to the publisher for printing. They responded with relief over the mistakes I caught, and I'm told I can expect to see a real copy in my hands by August. But, as they ran behind on the schedule as it is, I am thinking I'll see it in September. It's going to be on the shelves in October. You can already pre-order the book at places like Powell's bookstore online and also at Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. (Search for it under my name or the book's title. The link above is to an Arizona-based independent bookstore, Changing Hands.)

I'm feeling such a myriad of feelings. They fall somewhere between relief (Thank goodness that part's done!), elation (Wow, I wrote a real book! And it includes all my own photographs!), fear (Yikes, what if I made a huge error and didn't catch it?), hesitation (Will my readers like it, find it useful?) and worry (I hope the editor takes care of all the edits correctly.). Back and forth I go from one of those feelings to the next. It's been that way since I turned in the very first edit. We won't go into the feelings I had during the writing process, especially the end of it. Those are not fit to print here. But I've been bracing myself for each next step since, just moving forward in the process as best I could.

Curious to know how other other authors have felt at this moment, the moment when they, too, finished their long-term book project and turned it in to the publisher, I asked a few authors on Facebook and Twitter. Here are their responses:

• Brette Sember, author of Bad Apples: How to Manage Difficult Employees (Adams Media) and more than 35 other books, says about her first one, "I think I was nervous about what people would think of it, scared it wouldn't be received well." Long past those feelings now, Sember says she feels relief when she's completed another book project. She can actually feel "excitement to move on to the next."

• Andrew Hayes, a writer in the United Kingdom, says it was a bit weird after he finished his book, The Edinburgh Historic Walking Guide (Available next week, you can pre-order it now!) and turned it in to the publisher. "Perhaps surreal is the right word. I never thought I could accomplish such a task as writing a 50,000-word document in three months." After such intensity, relief set in as he realized how much time had passed. "...it wasn't until I saw the sample cover that I realized the reality of the situation. Success!" Now he says he "can't wait to get started on the next one." It's a walking guide to Amsterdam.

• If you were Dara Chadwick, author of an important new book out this year, You'd Be So Pretty If, which explores the mother-daughter relationship and how it affects body image, you'd feel quite the mixture: pride, fear, relief (there's that word again), "and something I can only describe as bittersweet." She explains why she felt all of this: "Pride because, hey, I just finished a book--and not only that, but it was MY book: my idea, my passion, my project from start to finish. Fear because it's a deeply personal book and a subject I care about. How would others respond? Would they understand what I'd written? I felt relief because signing a book contract was the biggest professional commitment I'd ever made and I'd met my commitment." The bittersweet feelings resulted from the fact that her book really was about her relationship with her now deceased mother. "She really would have been so proud," says Chadwick, who was also sad to say goodbye to the process of writing the book itself, adding, "Letting go of my 'baby' was difficult."

• Relief seems to be the common theme amongst authors, as Illinois-based Annie Logue, who wrote the Socially Responsible Investing for Dummies book for Wiley (published this year) felt that, too. "And now? She says she feels "like I need to start working on all the things that I put off while working on the book."

Have you written a book or worked on a long-term project which left you feeling at some point during the process that maybe it would never end? You know it took persistence to pull you through. You had to believe in yourself and what you were doing. If you've got a long-term project going on now, even if it isn't a book, maybe you can relate to what all of us here have experienced. Eventually, you can expect to see that sense of relief set in. And it's a great accomplishment, as Sam Greengard, author of Finding the Work You Love, says. But most of all, it's pretty damn cool to join the ranks of the published authors worldwide. I think I'll rest on that feeling, at least for today.

Tomorrow, I have work to do.

So much for relief, right? What do you think?