May 2004 Issue - Essay # 4
The
Book
By
Jeff Stimpson
| I know envelopes. I stuffed them in my freelance days, to get jobs at newspapers in 1993 and 1995, and when I really needed a job before Alex was born. In the past two years, I've been stuffing them with essays to parenting slicks, and some have even made it past those slush piles. Slush piles are where publications keep submissions and resumes until everyone determines it's time to throw them out. (I know this, since I once had a freelance job throwing them out.) Most lately, I've been stuffing
envelopes to book publishers and agents, stuffing them with 38 pages of
the beginning of "Alex: The Fight, Family, and Fathering of a Preemie." Like
it? Nobody seemed to, through
months licking and dozens of walks to the Post Office. Most of the
envelopes returned with rejection slips to "Dear Author"
("Dear" my ass), and making the whole proposal sound like the
publisher's fault, like a bad relationship one side wants out of. Then, what in my career has
become known as The Law of Enough Stuffed Envelopes held true. "Dear Mr Stimpson,"
the e-mail from the Thank you! Jill took this news
of my getting one step past the slush pile with a warm hug and a
pronouncement of "wonderful" (she doesn't use that word
lightly). She dove onto the publisher's site and, after finding that they've
brought back some out-of-print titles she's always enjoyed, said
they seemed "kind." That's another word she doesn't overuse. Anxious for any syllables to
add to a note back to this suddenly-important publisher, I passed along my
wife's kind comments. "Thanks for your reply and for your wife's kind
comments," came the reply, within a few hours. "We look forward
to seeing your ms." Wow. My ms. They want to look
at my ms. I'm really in the biz now because they called my
"book" an "ms." Now all I have to do is write it. Of course, it is written, and
splayed across my Web site. A week's copy-and-pasting, clicking and dumping,
bypassing some essays and spotlighting others, produced some 400
typewritten pages that start with Alex's birth and end with his first day
of kindergarten. I ended each day with a headache and a suspicion that
writing a book, when you try to do it in a week, is hard work. Not to mention mailing it. Half
an hour in Staples convinced me that nobody makes a box especially to mail
manuscripts anymore. Any chance this book publisher--in general not a
swift-moving herd, I've noticed--has climbed into the 1980s, and will
accept two floppy disks? "Paper, please," came
the reply. "Thanks." It's amazing what goes into a
book, and even more amazing what doesn't. Most references to readers of my
site had to go, as did episodic and glossary-like essays I compiled
during the NICU days. Then I would spot an essay that should have gone in
two chapters before, and I'd have to thumb back through the growing pile--kept in a box that once housed letter-sized manila folders--and
re-insert the errant essay. Then I saw that my table of contents made no
sense at all, so I was constantly re-typing that. Paper, please. Oh yeah,
and I had to remember to add "By Jeff Stimpson" to the title
page. Two inches thick, finally. How
in hell do you ship something like this? "Have you sent your
ms?" came the e-mail. What's this guy trying to pull?
At Staples I did find some
padded envelopes about the size of the Constitution's mainsail. I lugged
two of them ("...with an SASE ...") and the File Folder Box Of
My Life to the Post Office. Nine-ninety, First Class. "You can just
give me two $10 stamps," I said. "We don't have
those," said the clerk. "I'll give you two $3.85. That makes
$7.70. Then I'll give you two $2 stamps--" "I have four $1
stamps," I said. "You do? Okay. Then you
just need 20 more cents on each. You're not ready to mail this now? You do
know that when you are ready, you have to mail this in a Post
Office?" I did and I do, the next day. I
slide it into the Oversized Package and Bundled Letters slot, where it
sticks and jams the door. "You have to mail something like that at a
window," says another clerk. "If you do not mail it at a window,
it will come right back to you." "Dear Mr. Publisher,"
I later wrote, "I sent it early yesterday. I apologize for the delay,
but I wanted to work a little on the TOC, cut a bit, and assemble a page
of photos. Please let me know if you don't receive it in the next day or
so." The fastidious author. Surely
he'll like that. "Thanks," came the reply, within the hour.
"We'll watch for it." How bored is this guy? Why's he
doing this? What could happen? I did mail it at a
window, but I still expect it will come right back to me, by way of
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Author's Biography Jeff Stimpson, 42, lives in
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Essay
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