I wrote, “In a fierce, epically bloody battle, the Korean soldiers surrounded and decimated the Chinese troops.”

My editor writes, “Decimated, as you will know from your Roman research, has a specific meaning (one in ten, the punishment of a cowardly legion) and a looser, more widely used one. But since we are so close to discussions of the Roman Empire here, let’s use this word strictly. Don’t put ‘decimate’ if you mean ‘destroy,’ ‘obliterate,’ or ‘annihilate.’”

I swear, he has corrected this usage at least once in EVERY manuscript I’ve sent and I can’t seem to remember it.

Anyway, I like “obliterate.” We will use “obliterate,” just as we will avoid “lassoo.” (I also like the way he uses the royal first-person for these corrections…)

So in Chapter 21, I wrote of the monk Benedict that, in Monte Cassino, he “developed the rules by which his community would live: the Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule was the lex of a kingdom removed from the political struggles, a conscious attempt to lassoo Christian practice and haul it back to the realm where the Indian and Chinese monks dwelt.” My editor changed that to “A conscious attempt to bring Christian practice back to the realm.”

The accompanying note: “No, let’s not lassoo anything.”

I keep forgetting he’s from Connecticut.

ADDENDUM: Just reached the chapter on the Arab kingdom of Himyar, in which I wrote a really awful sentence.

My sentence: “It wasn’t the only massacre of his reign, but it became the domino that knocked his carefully built plans for preserving his kingdom down into a disastrous heap.”

Editorial remark: “Sentence is a disastrous heap. Please untangle.”

I just did. Well…a Gordian-knot type of untangling. I axed it.

After an eerily complicated exchange of emails with my editor (for some reason I have lost the ability to make myself understood in everyday matters–maybe it’s a side effect of reducing medieval theological debates into straightforward prose–the obfuscation pops back out in another place, like a balloon squeezed in the middle), we have decided that as long as I finish the manuscript by the end of the summer, the book can still come out on schedule.

I’m pretty sure I can finish it in August. Not sure in a really absolutely CONFIDENT sense, like I sometimes am. (Of course I can cook dinner for twelve at two hours notice! I’ll be happy to check your Latin translations and supervise your brother’s violin practice at the same time! Yes, naturally I’ll call the church square dance, just let me get a couple books out of the library and read up on it!).

No, this is “pretty sure” more in the sense that I might say, “We’re going on family vacation in July.” (Providing that no one throws up or breaks a bone first.) Or, “Yes, we’ll have enough money to replace the tub in the kids’ bathroom this fall.” (Providing that the cars don’t break down and I balance my checkbook correctly.) Or, “We’ll go out and ride Max this afternoon.” (Provided that he’s still in the fence when we get out there and not chowing down on the neighbor’s priceless turf farm.)

However, I’m feeling a little more confident thanks to a schedule change. I’ve started writing from 4 to 10 AM every day except Sunday. Yep, every day.

I’ve heard of writers who do this for their entire working life, although I’d never tried it myself. But I’ve been feeling like I needed to do something totally different to shove myself off dead-center with this manuscript and get some new momentum.

I’ve been following this schedule for about a month now, and it’s having a truly fascinating effect. For one thing, working every single day (before this I was working every other day, for a longer period of time) creates a sort of continuity and flow that’s suddenly advancing me further and further forward. For another, there are NO interruptions. No matter how carefully I guard my writing time during the day, there is always SOMETHING that can’t wait.

At 4 AM, nobody wants to talk to me. It’s phenomenal.

Most of all, by 10 AM I have done my hard creative work for the day. I feel like I’ve finished the most difficult task in front of me, and all the hours to come can just be…fun. I can be with the kids or work on the farm without being preoccupied by undone writing. Even if I’m doing business later in the day, I don’t have that uneasy uncomfortable feeling that I’m taking time away from the original writing that’s the foundation of my professional life.

So it’s been great for my brain.

My body’s having a little more trouble adjusting.

(Ah, the glamour of Eastern Roman history before dawn.)

So now I have a question for you: what should the book be called?

Important details: The book traces the metamorphosis of public confession of sin. I argue that, over the course of the twentieth century, it changes from a religious ritual that takes place in front of fellow believers, into a secular rite that erring leaders HAVE to perform in front of their followers in order to hold on to power. I examine, in detail, the scandals surrounding Grover Cleveland’s illegitimate son, Aimee Semple McPherson’s disappearance, Ted Kennedy’s plunge into the creek at Chappaquiddick, Jimmy Carter’s Playboy interview, Jim Bakker’s tryst, Jimmy Swaggart’s voyeurism, and Clinton’s…well, everything that Clinton got up to.

My working title was THE ART OF THE PUBLIC GROVEL: SEXUAL SIN AND PUBLIC CONFESSION IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA. I really didn’t expect Princeton to hang onto that title, but my editor at PUP says that he likes “The Art of the Public Grovel.” (Although I should add that the outside reader of my dissertation, which had the same title, didn’t like “public grovel.” At all.)

However, he’d like to change the subtitle to: How Leaders Return to Power After Sexual Sin.

Which is a perfectly good subtitle. It’s just that (warning: academic-speak coming up) I want to be careful about implying that there’s monocausality behind, say, Clinton’s successful attempts to resist his removal from office. Clinton’s methods of confessing and apologizing DID play a big part in his ability to hang on to the good opinion of way more people than you’d expect. But it wasn’t the ONLY reason that he managed to stay in office.

On the other hand, this isn’t a strictly academic title–it needs to appeal to a wider readership, so I do need a title and subtitle that’s attractive to general readers.

So if you’d like to suggest a title and subtitle, please do. If we use yours, I’ll send you a couple of free copies of any of my books that you’d like. I’ve got a big box of the Korean version of the History of the Ancient World, if you happen to read Korean. It’s very beautifully done. (Once again, my Korean publisher takes the prize for production values.)

I’m in Princeton this week, as it happens, saying hello to my editor at Princeton, visiting my friend Lauren, and reading inscriptions from medieval south Indian kingdoms in the basement of the Firestone library. Tomorrow I’m headed down to Manhattan to consult with my agent and my editor at Norton; I’ll report on that as soon as I get a chance.

We’re now in the contract negotiation stage of the process.

Getting a book approved for publication by a university press is quite different than selling to a trade publisher. With my other books, I’ve submitted an outline to my editor, whose primary concerns are 1) is it readable? and 2) will it sell? He then takes it to an editorial meeting, where he presents it to the other editors and tries to convince them that the project is worth investing in. If they agree, I get a contract.

University press publishing is quite different. In the first place, while every press needs to sell books in order to stay afloat, the mission of a university press is (to quote the Princeton University Press mission statement) “to disseminate scholarship…both within academia and to society at large….regardless of commercial viability.”

In fact, university presses often publish books that are of interest to only a few specialized scholars–which has led to the evolution of a weird publishing phenomenon, the subvention–which happens when your academic department forks over money to the publisher to help pay for your book, since only fifty people are ever going to buy and read it. (My book, fortunately, won’t need a subvention, since it should interest a reasonably wide segment of the general reading public.)

Once both the PUP editor and I were pleased with the manuscript (this took several revisions), he sent out it to peer reviewers–scholars in the field (in this case, American religion) who would pass on the project as being academically respectable and defensible as a scholarly argument.

The two peer reviewers, who remain anonymous to me, then wrote reports back to the editor–and, to my relief, the reports were extremely positive. (“This is a very fine book which I strongly recommend that Princeton University Press publish,” one of them wrote. “It teases out, in nuanced and thus useful ways, some of the complex interrelations between religion and public life in this country.”) Both reviewers also had criticisms of the manuscript, of course (i.e., “Might she also say something more about the hegemony of evangelicalism over American culture?”). So the editor asked me to write a brief response to the criticisms in the reports. He then took the manuscript, the reports, and my response to the editorial board–which approved the project.

(The Princeton University Press office building, which just screams “We are not a commercial trade publisher!”–especially in comparison to 500 Fifth Avenue in New York.)

Those of you who are VERY alert may notice that the publication date on the History of the Ancient World has changed, on the various bookseller websites that already list it, from Feb. 28 to Mar. 26 of 2007. Norton has decided that the production challenges of putting out such a huge book dictate an extra month of production time.

Well, darn.

Furthermore, for reasons having to do with layout and theme, publication of my review-essay on John Stackhouse’s Finally Feminist has been delayed until the January/February issue of Books and Culture.

AND I haven’t yet gotten my dissertation revisions from my committee. So it’s still sitting here untouched on my desk. However…count yourself lucky, because you now get to follow the process of academic publishing from the beginning–yea, witness the very genesis of an academic title.

When I finished the draft, I sent it off to the religion editor of a well-known university press (I met him a couple of years ago, and he asked to see it when it was finished). We’ll call him Editor X, at Anonymous Prestigious University Press, since I don’t have a signed contract in hand.

(That’s Editor X, in case you’re wondering.)

Editor X wrote me back, saying that the dissertation had the makings of an excellent academic title, should I be interested in revising it for publication. (Dissertations always need revising for publication, mostly because the format of a dissertation is not designed to keep a reader interested. Or awake, come to that.) I said that I would; I’d like to have a title published by a university press on my resume.

First, though, I had to get permission from my editor at Norton to publish with another press. Norton has first refusal rights on my next nonfiction work. Technically, in fact, Norton doesn’t even have to LOOK at anything else I write until all four volumes of the History of the World are finished; I have in essence signed my nonfiction-writing future away to them for the next eight years. (This doesn’t include any titles I might write for Peace Hill Press; my agent put in a clause exempting PHP books from the restriction. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Which is why I have an agent.)

Should Norton refuse to look at the dissertation, it would just sit in limbo until 2012, since I can’t legally submit it to anyone else until they formally decline to publish. Some publishing companies actually are obstreperous enough to behave in this way. Norton is not one of them. My editor, the brilliant and accommodating Starling Lawrence, took a quick look through it and agreed that it would be a better academic title than trade book.

Armed with his written pass, I told Editor X that we could proceed. He then sent me a detailed list of revisions which would need to be made to the manuscript.

Even after I make the revisions, though, Editor X doesn’t get the final word. He has to send the manuscript out to three (or so) selected academic experts, called “readers.” The readers have to agree that I’ve made my argument convincingly before Anonymous Prestigious University Press can send me a contract. This is called “peer review.” Unlike a commercial publisher, a university press can’t just publish a book that SOUNDS well-reasoned. It has to be approved AS well-reasoned by others in the profession. Which is why a university-press title has prestige, on your resume. It says that you’ve convinced your colleagues that you’re a sound thinker. (Or at least that you’re thinking the way they’re thinking. Which is not, I realize, exactly the same thing.)

Anyway, I can start on the revisions for Editor X at any point. I’ve been waiting to hear back from my W&M committee about revisions that THEY might like, hoping (vainly) that the two sets of revisions might, possibly, dovetail.

But I haven’t been able to get responses yet. For various reasons, all beyond my control. Delays, delays….

So I may just have to start revising for Editor X, and hope desperately that the committee revisions are more or less in the same ballpark.

See, this is the problem with being a writer. You spend half your time working frantically to meet deadlines, and the other half of your time fretting about the HUGE time lapse between your deadlines and any actual appearance of your work in print. Publishing is all about EXTREMELY delayed gratification. This puts a horrendous strain on your maturity, which is why writers eat too much chocolate, or drink too much, or otherwise engage in unhelpful but immediately satisfying behavior.

Blogging, by contrast, is the quick-and-temporary fix. Immediately satisfying but a little short on staying power. Blogging is to writing as sugar is to steak. Blogging is to….

Well, supply your own analogy. I’d write a few more, but now I have to go back to categorizing the Germanic tribes that were hanging around the Rhine in the fourth century, a task which I will be rewarded for when Volume II makes its appearance, sometime in 2009.

(Me in Italy, reflecting on what happens to writers who wait too long for gratification)

Hmm.

At least everyone is done throwing up. (How’s that for inviting the universe to smack you one?)
If I can get these revisions done by tonight, I can put the manuscript in the mail tomorrow and it’ll arrive at Norton on Monday when I do. Otherwise I’ve got to put it in my carry-on when I fly up Sunday night (I never check bags if I can help it), and then I’ll have room for the manuscript, one pair of clean underwear, and not a lot else. Certainly not the shoes I bought JUST to wear in New York.

Time to get back to work. But in close, here’s something you DON’T want to see your editor write in the margin:

Yes, it says ARGGH. Definitely need to work on that page.

Star points out that this will add a hundred pages to the book, not to mention that the text would probably have to be set sideways in order for it to fit, and that it annoys readers to be constantly turning the book around as they read. So I’m trying to work out a simpler timeline for the end of each chapter that would fit neatly on the page beneath the last paragraph.

The first half of the book has been reworked more often than the last half, so I’m expecting the revisions to get more complicated as I go on. I’m working on this every spare minute so that I can put it in the overnight mail on Saturday morning. I could beg for more time, but I had arranged some time ago to go to New York early next week to meet with my agent and with the publicity folks at Norton (I’ll report on the trip when I get back), and it would be embarrassing to show up without the revisions done.

It would be easier if I’d managed to clear my week of everything but revision. Unfortunately, I also have a deadline today to finish a book review that I’m already late on, and I have to meet with my dissertation director on Friday morning, so I’ll have to make time to get ready for that. Also the children are throwing up. Hurrah. If they were all old enough to throw up neatly into a receptacle, that would make life easier, but instead we’ve had a fair amount of running for the bathroom and spewing as we go (it would actually be better if they stood still and threw up in one neat puddle, even if the puddle did happen to be on the living room rug). Also, instead of climbing out of his loft bed and throwing up in the bathroom, my nine-year-old leaned over the edge of the loft and threw up into a pile of Legos on the carpet below.

Eww.

Chaos, in short, is gradually overtaking us. Here’s how my office looks just now, with seven piles of working manuscript (two piles of my copy, the revised and unrevised; two piles of Star’s copy, the chapters I’ve gone through and the ones still to go; the pile of clean, printed-out manuscript; the stack of maps; the stack of illustrations):

And the corner that you CAN’T see from the door, which contains more shelves, more books, and the table where I work on my dissertation, looks like this:

To add insult to injury, there’s a dead mouse in my office wall, which means I’m lighting scented candles to be able to stay in the room at all. (What can I say? We live in a farmhouse. Mice are always going into their good night in some place which can be smelled but not found.) And it’s RAINING. And has been raining. And grey.

The view out my window today.

That’s my table of contents, pinned on the board to the left, for my reference. And taped up in front of me is a list of synonyms for “war” (conflict, strife, quarrel, squabble, battle, fray, clash, skirmish, brawl, melee…) which I find myself in constant need of while editing. How many times can you say “War broke out” without needing a little variety?

Will report on my progress shortly.

And long is the word. I’ve been negotiating with my editor at Norton, the brilliant and capable Starling Lawrence (hey, he bought my proposal, didn’t he?) over the word count until I’ve begun to feel like Abraham bargaining with God over the number of righteous men in Sodom.

Proposal: “Each manuscript will be 150,000 words.” (My agent remarked at the time, “That’s pretty long, you know. I’m not sure they’re going to go for it.”)

Me to Starling Lawrence, about a year later, “I might go a bit over.”

A year after that: “I think it’s going to come in at 170,000 words.” (Star: “That doesn’t scare me.”)

Just before submission: “I’m at 250,000 words and can’t find any flab to cut.” (Longer pause from Norton this time, until Star emails me back and says that he’s consulted his colleagues, and 250K doesn’t sound totally unreasonable, given that this is the history of the whole ancient WORLD.)

Me, to my own soul, as I do the final word count: “Good golly, I’m at 280K, not counting endnotes.”

In fact I think it reads very well–the individual chapters are relatively short, and they hang together in a tight narrative–but I do think there’s a limit 1) to what Norton will shell out in paper costs, an d 2) what readers will actually pick up and begin reading. But I’ve put it into the mail, all twelve pounds of it, and am now waiting to hear the verdict.