The writing, editing, formatting and compiling of the family history is done. The pages have been numbered and the table of contents is complete. It’s one big PDF now, not to be unraveled for a misspelled word, or, horrors, a left-out comma. I’ve even chosen the color plates (we budgeted for 30). I’m ready to upload it to the printer, although it’s a little difficult to give it up. It’s been for my eyes only for pretty much two years.
Family histories have a tendency to cause distress. You don’t know what you might say, or not emphasize, or misrepresent out of misunderstanding or understatement. I’m actually a little leery of what this may do to my standing in my family. At least any animosity was created with a clean conscience. There is not a sentence in this whole book that I wrote in vengeance, or with the intent to hurt. There are unpleasant thingsI left out altogether if they related to living people – or people whose children were still alive – and I was not given explicit permission to include them.
My friend Seafarer is working a bit on the margins of the cover and then that can be sent in as well, but the writing and image selection of it is done. I’ll be the first to jump in and say it is not perfect. I am not an editor or a typesetter and my printer isn’t employed as such, either.
But there we have it. More on the experience later.
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