Crossing the 75K Line

Hello!

This isn’t a regular issue, but a short update on The Book. It’s officially crossed the 75,000 word count that my contract mandates! Technically, I guess I can turn it in, but that’s not going to happen just yet: I still have quite a bit of work to do to get it into the shape that I want it.

For those of you who are new to this newsletter, this is a book about the history of cosplay and fan costuming. Some more details are here and here, but the short version is that this is to be a fairly comprehensive look at the cosplay scene, where it originated from, and how it exists as a form of fandom. It’s been a lot of fun to work on, and the past couple of months have been crunch time as I work on getting this completed by my deadline in March.

Where it stands now: I’ve pretty much gotten the entire thing laid out as I want, with a good chunk of each individual chapter / section written. There are a handful of sections that I still need to write, and even more that are skeletons: I’m working on adding in quotes from interviews and secondary sources. In other places, there are just places that I need to flesh out, rewrite, or simply shift around in the manuscript as it currently exists.

The picture's my current to-do checklist.

So, lots to do, but the nice thing is that I pretty much have everything I need to get all of those points completed in time. I’m still conducting interviews with a bunch of people, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to conduct additional ones even after I turn it in: I’ve got a bunch of conventions that I’m planning on attending, and as is typical with history, there’s no end and no beginning to the neat things you find when you start flipping over rocks. I’ve had a couple of those revelations already in this last week, which have necessitated some additional research and changes to a couple of sections.

But, the end is in sight, at least for this first draft.

Andrew