Dun, da, dun, done!

Processes always have quite a number of more or less continuous steps leading from here to there, from a start to a finish, but for purposes of our mental health certain stages of processes are celebrated to mark our progress along the path.  Yesterday was one such day.  After having had this manuscript nagging at me for the past couple of  years, the Phactor declared his book manuscript done knowing full well that it is not done done, but it was at a stage where little else was being accomplished so with a semester looming, and knowing that progress on big projects does not happen during semesters, a big pile of paper (That's a 4.5" tall coffee cup for comparison.) was shipped off to the publisher.  Also a certain very patient editor had been promised that the book would be done this summer, and as mentioned above, with a semester's arrival ready to destroy August, if a book was to be done this summer, this was the week.  But more than a feeling of accomplishment, it was a wave of relief that passed over me.  It will be a couple of weeks at least before an editor kindly explains that this or that should have been done that way or this way.  This is to be expected, but these are only details.  It was the ideas that counted anyways.  It is way premature to be flogging my book to readers; that will come later, when it actually has a cover and a title (it remains tentative).  Suffice it to say that the Phactor's academic alter ego has attempted to explain a great deal about what we know about plant diversity in a manner accessible to the interested amateur, which is very different from most botany books.  So botany textbook it is not.  Now to go and update my CV and indicate the status as "In press", which is sort of more impressive than "manuscript in limbo" or "manuscript progress incredibly slow" or one of the many other euphemisms for "not published".  Actually it has been accepted for publication.  The next task is to clear enough of the book debris out of the office that there's room for a new semester.  Who knows what will be discovered in the lower strata?