Here’s what it’s like to write a book: You get a contract in, say, July ’05 and start writing, with a deadline of July ’06, for a book that will be in the stores in January ’07. As you work on your chapters, you live in dread of a day like today when Parade magazine, one of the most-read magazines in America, has a front-page story on a topic you wrote about in Chapter One 7 months ago.

Yup, Parade has a cover story called “How Many Planets Are There?” by David H. Levy. It includes a sidebar on the problem of classifying planets. Since the section in my first chapter that talks about planets uses them as a categorization that seems obvious and real but isn’t, Parade just pulled my punch, so to speak.

Damn. I hate when that happens. Plus I have another year before my book is out. That’s a lot of time in which to fret.

Categories: Uncategorized dw