Thursday, November 24, 2011

"Never index your own book."

That's a quote from Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut.  I have no idea how I can retain that absurd bit of trivia from a book I read once, fifteen years ago, but it stuck with me.  And now that I have first-hand experience with indexing my own book, I understand what a profound and beautiful statement it is.

Argh argh argh I'm in index hell!

Okay, so it''s not all that bad.  I just hoped and expected to have the last imperfections ironed out a few days ago, and another proof copy ordered up by now.  But the index is the primary way by which many cookbook users find things in a cookbook, so I'm going over mine as thoroughly as I can manage, when I am awake enough not to mangle the job.

On the bright side, the proof copy is darned pretty.  I'll get a photo of it posted soon, so that folks can see what they're getting.

Among other things that this last (cross my fingers) revision has fixed were mis-spellings, an improperly numbered chapter heading, the addition of a substitute for page numbers, and one recipe that got lost between drafts one and two.

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