There was a big big celebration at the Davis house last week, as I packed up the very last chapter of Myles Traveled, and shipped it off to Bill Myles for review and markup. This milestone - or Mylestone - as I like to play on words, has been a long time and a lot of keyboard pecking in coming!

Of course, this finishes draft two so there is still work to do. Bill has been through it all twice, so I still have his second draft edits and corrections to make. And during this next rewrite, in addition to the corrections, it needs to shrink a bit and be polished one more time. At 482 pages and 266,161 words, it is way to big. It is supposed to be a book - not a manifesto! But that is what I call "downhill work" and will go quickly. Then we have lined up a few good "readers," some poor souls who will wade through it and tell us if we have anything and where it needs fixed. Assuming we didn't completely bomb, the next step will be fixing any problems they find - be those big or small - and then off for a good proofreading! After that, we will go shopping for a publisher. (Hint hint to any of those types reading this!)

So we still have a ways to go. But as I say, this is downhill and the fun stuff. To get these 482 pages and 266,161 words in the current draft, I figure I typed at least another 600 pages and 350,000 words in the original tape transcripts. All of those transcripts were edited, corrected, then indexed, cut, pasted, and rearranged, and finally extensively retyped and compiled into the draft manuscript. So I figure I have typed in excess of a thousand pages, and well beyond a half-million words. That's why I chuckle when people ask me, "What's taking so long?"

Despite all that work, I have never spent a night at the keyboard that wasn't interesting. Here's to hoping when we are done that our readers feel the same way.