And Now the Real Work Begins…

I told you all that I had finished the first draft of the Dahlgren biography the other evening, and I got to enjoy that fact for about 24 hours.

The hard part now begins. The difficult part is the process of editing and tweaking what I’ve written. I sent the very rough draft of two chapters to Frank O’Reilly for review and comment. Frank not only corrected the factual errors and the like, he also did an extremely thorough copy edit, probably much more than such an early draft required or deserved. I neglected to tell Frank that he was reading what was quite literally first draft, and he thought it was supposed to be something close to a finished product and went after it quite aggressively with his red pen. The copy editing job was first rate, but it took me most of the evening to incorporate his suggested revisions.

I also sent the Second Bull Run chapter to Scott Patchan for his review and comment, and Scott suggested adding some substantive material. That also took time.

That means that I got through two and a half chapters worth of comments this evening. Once done, I will then print the thing out and start editing it in earnest. The truth is that getting it down on paper is really just the start of the process of getting a manuscript ready for publication, not the end.

I have a long way to go. Before long, I will be thoroughly sick of the thing. 🙂