I just received my first copy of the final, real, tangible edition of Everything is Miscellaneous. The book goes on sale May 1.

The book is sitting on our dining room table like a mousetrap I’m afraid to check. I’m squeamish. No one likes to see a dead mouse. I dread reading it because all that it can contain for me are errors, infelicities and missed opportunities. The paper has absorbed the ink. It is irrevocable. My sentence has been pronounced.

But I’m going to have to read it because I no longer remember exactly what’s in it and what I cut. I couldn’t even at the drop of a hat summarize the book’s argument, at least not without some throat clearing and stumbles. And it is an argument that develops over the course of chapters, which may be a problem for reviewers who expect a business book that blurts out its idea early on. But Times Books has been great about dropping hats all over, so I’m going to have to be able to recount the argument in a couple of pithy sentences…and then, if all goes well, repeat those sentences in lots of venues.

I think it’s a good book. At least, when I finished it, I thought I’d done pretty much what I had wanted to do. So, don’t take the fact that I’ve hidden the printed copy under a pile of junk mail as a judgment of the book itself. Rather, it’s the done-ness that scares the bejeebus out of me. It was much less scary when it was still possible.

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous publishing books phobias ]