The best laid plans of mice and men and editors.

OK. In my last post I gave you the production schedule for my book which was great for me because it fit into my schedule.  Well someone forgot to tell the copy editor because she did not send me the book yet and the printer is going to contact her.
I have been waiting for it by catching up on my blogs and finances.  The problem is the deadline was June 30, which is the date I leave for the church conference and I thought I could go work free.  Now I don't know what will happen.  Oh well.

This is another learning experience in writing a book.  Hurry up and wait.

Writing the book was another experience.  I had to get permission to publish from all the living women.  I sent them what I wrote and they rewrote it so most of the living women wrote their autobiographies in my book, which is great.  I also took some of the oral histories of the living women which will be archived in the Chemical Heritage Foundation.  They had to approve the transcript of the oral history before I could use it.  So even though I had the oral history on my computer I could not use the information from it until it was approved.  I got into trouble with one woman because of that.  I wrote her story from the publication which was available to me.  When I sent it to her she said that it was all wrong and the published book was wrong!  How was I to know that!  She had the transcript of her oral history but she did not take the time to read it.  So after three months of having this in her possession she decided not to be in the book because I was on deadline.  I was so mad because she is a Spelman professor and the cover of the book shows Spelman women.  I will not give her name because she apologized to me and we are still friends.  I have only one Spelman woman in the book.
Two other women dropped out at the last minute because they did not want to review what I wrote.  I was upset about that, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Another woman I had scheduled a telephone oral history.  I wanted to visit her in person but I had a hard time getting in touch with her to schedule the visit.  So I was ready to take the oral history and when I called she said she was busy and could she write something and send it to me.  Oh well.  What she wrote I already had from a published book so I just used it.

Those were the trials and tribulations of writing a book about living people.  The dead ones are easier unless I hear from their relatives.  I did speak to the widower of one of my women about his wife.  I got a lot of background information from him.

I intend to write another book, now that I know how to do it.  I have a list of women that I will have to find by genealogical studies, but that will be fun.

Jeannette Brown
Sisterchemists LLC