I've never been a journal keeper. I've tried many times; the stack of mostly-empty notebooks on my shelf, abandoned almost as soon as they were begun, is proof of that. Art journals, gardening journals, travel journals, project journals, and plain old diaries: I've tried them all.
I'm not sure why I have such trouble keeping a diary. Sometimes it seems like living my life takes up so much time, there's no time left for writing about it. Or maybe I just don't have the patience. Or the introspective nature. Or something.
So what makes me think this effort will be any different? Well for one thing, now that Victoria Regina Tarot has a publication contract, I have a good reason to keep a record of my progress. Two years from now I may have trouble remembering the specifics of the editing process, and it would be nice to be able to look it up. (Heck, I'm already fuzzy on the details of the contract negotiation, and that just happened a couple of weeks ago.)
The inexorable, contractual nature of the project may help too. My hope is that working on the project will help me keep up with the diary, and writing in the diary will help keep me working on the project. A symbiotic relationship of sorts. Or something like that.
So what makes me think anyone wants to read this? Chalk it up to sheer egotism if you like. Or more charitably, perhaps sharing my publication diary with you all puts more pressure on me to keep it going. Perhaps having it on a website for all to see will prevent it from becoming another one of those sad unused notebooks on my shelf. And maybe you all will find it interesting, possibly even useful if you are getting into publication yourself and want to avoid some of the countless mistakes I'm sure I'll make in the next couple of years.
By the way, a real page layout will come soon (as soon as I have time for that site redesign I've been wanting to do for the last year or so). In the meantime here we go.
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