One down and miles to go

After spending hours formatting my journal, I submitted it to Create Space. I should get my proof copy Monday and if all looks good I will sign off on it and then figure out how to get it on Kindle. Thanks to Raymond Griffith who made a special trip to take the photograph I described to him. So that is one thing I can cross off my list!

And, I am halfway finished editing "The Lunch Club." This was a fun book to write and I hope I get it polished enough to start sending it out soon.

Several people have asked me why it is so important to get my work published. Surely the personal satisfaction of having written a book is enough. "You got it out of your system," they say, as if a novel was one of those songs that get stuck in your mind until you want to scream.

One of the people who asked this baffling question was an artist. I asked her what she did with her paintings after she finished them. "Do you stack them in your closet?"

"Of course not," she said. "I sell them and people hang them on their wall to look at."

She didn't put all her talent into something that no one would ever see. I told her that a writer's published book is the same as her framed painting. It isn't finished until others read it. Publishing is a kind of vindication that our time and trouble were valuable to someone else.

It's a lot of fun, too, but I didn't tell her that. Artists are supposed to suffer.