![\"i-bd3ab7a8b9e2bca6fe2a0c0eea8a12db-sm_first_draft.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/467\/files\/2012\/04\/i-bd3ab7a8b9e2bca6fe2a0c0eea8a12db-sm_first_draft.jpg\")
<\/p>\n“Hey, dude. What’s in the binder?”<\/p>\n
“Well, it’s the first draft of my book. I finished it this morning, and printed it out to have a paper copy to look at.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Ooooh! The book about me?”<\/p>\n
“Well, it’s a book about physics, featuring you. But yes, that’s the only book I’m working on at the moment.”<\/p>\n
“That’s fantastic, dude. You’re all done, and now I get to be famous!”<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t say I’m all done. In fact, I’d say that the work is really just getting started.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“What do you mean?”<\/p>\n
“Well, for one thing, it’s too long. The contract calls for 40,000 words, and this is a hair over 53,000. That’s about a third more book than I was supposed to provide.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, but more is always good, right? A bunny and a third is better than just one bunny.”<\/p>\n
“In this case, not necessarily. I need to trim it down a good deal, and that’s almost worse than writing new material.”<\/p>\n
“Just as long as you don’t cut the bits about me.”<\/p>\n
“I’ll see what I can do. I also need to make sure that it all hangs together, since the last time I looked closely at Chapter 3 was in October. And I need to work on getting the figures to look right, which always takes longer than it ought to.”<\/p>\n
“It needs more pictures of me!”<\/p>\n
“Yes, it probably does. So, you see, there’s a bunch of work yet to do.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, but not right now, right?”<\/p>\n
“No, not right now. Right now, I’m going to let it sit over Christmas, and then start revisions in January. For the moment, I’m just going to enjoy being done with the first pass.”<\/p>\n
“Good plan. We should celebrate. Let’s go for a walk!”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, let’s do that.”<\/p>\n
———————-<\/p>\n
The tally so far:<\/p>\n
Introduction<\/strong> Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality<\/strong> Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle<\/strong><\/p>\n Current Revision: 7 Chapter 3: The Copenhagen Interpretation<\/strong> Chapter 4: The Many-Worlds Interpretation<\/strong> Chapter 5: The Quantum Zeno Effect<\/strong> Chapter 6: Quantum Tunneling<\/strong> Chapter 7: Entanglement<\/strong><\/p>\n Current Revision: 3 Chapter 8: Quantum Teleportation<\/strong> Chapter 9: Extra Dimensions<\/strong> Chapter 10: Virtual Particles<\/strong> Chapter 11: Evil Squirrels<\/strong> Bonus Out-of-Context Dialogue:<\/strong> “The dog was right. You are<\/i> evil squirrels.”<\/p>\n This looks like I added three whole chapters since the last progress report, plus the Introduction and finishing off the Teleportation chapter. That’s really kind of a cheat, though, as two of those chapters (marked with an asterisk) existed in more-or-less complete form from back when I wrote up the book proposal. I needed to revise them a bit, but not as drastically as I had originally thought.<\/p>\n The total word count for the great big file that I printed at Staples this afternoon is 53,308, on 213 pages (space and a half, with place-holder figures but no dog pictures). That’ll need to come down, but I’m not sure how much– I’ll have to talk to my editor. I’m sure there are lots of places where it can be tightened up a bit, and I’ll be looking for stuff to trim when I start going through it after the holidays.<\/p>\n For now, though, I’m declaring the first pass through the manuscript done, just in time for Christmas. And a fine present it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Hey, dude. What’s in the binder?” “Well, it’s the first draft of my book. I finished it this morning, and printed it out to have a paper copy to look at.” “Ooooh! The book about me?” “Well, it’s a book about physics, featuring you. But yes, that’s the only book I’m working on at the… Continue reading Bunnies Made of Cheese: The First Draft<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book_writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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